Is it Ethical for Employers to Search Social Media for Information about Applicants for a Job?

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Table of Contents

Abstract
Identification of ethical issues involved in this practice
Relating ethical issues to stakeholders
Discussion of ethical issues involved (positives and negatives)
Safeguards for stakeholders if the practice became a hiring standard
References

Abstract

Social media present a novel platform through which people can exchange information and ideas. In addition, people can post their profiles online for purposes of socialising, and thus employers can access potential employees’ information over the different social media platforms.

By using the social contract theory, this paper explains why it is unethical for employers to search social media for information about potential employees for a job. The paper highlights, evaluates and discusses the ethical issues involved in using the social media to gather employees’ personal data before giving some safeguards for stakeholders if the practice were to become a standard for hiring within organisations.

Identification of ethical issues involved in this practice

Essentially, social contract theory presents ethical and moral conducts as a contract entered between people and society. According to Locke (2003), social contract constitutes a “hypothesis explaining how society originates as well as the presumed relationship between its members, how they incur responsibilities, and their rights” (p.31).

The theory suggests that while exercising one’s rights during social interactions, people should not infringe on the rights of others. In the case of employers seeking to recruit personnel, it is their right to acquire the correct information on the potential employees’ details to mitigate the risks associated with employing people of inappropriate professional and ethical calibre (Tavani, 2011).

Although employees have the duty to provide correct, concise and precise information without deceit, employers should utilise all resources within their disposal to ensure that they acquire the right information required to make the final decision on whether to hire an applicant or not. This aspect, however, does not imply that employers need to invade the privacy of information of the personnel recruited.

The need to contact many people within a short time with minimal cost and the need to recruit persons qualified optimally for a given job opening constitute major ethical issues requiring evaluation while using social media to search for people’s information.

From the context of ethical conducts of the Australian Computer Society (ACS), the deployment of such information to draw a conclusion on whom to hire or not implies that the information needs to pass the ethical test of integrity, reliability and credibility.

However, how accurate is the information provided over the social media? Is it also ethical to deploy personalised information over social media to draw a conclusion about the ethical standards of a potential employee and what about the ethical concern of infringing on the privacy of an individual?

An adequate response to these interrogatives calls for evaluation and discussion of ethical issues in searching for employees’ information over the social media as the basis of informing hiring decisions in any organisation.

Relating ethical issues to stakeholders

Social media provides a platform where people can express themselves freely, while also giving room for people to post speculations and uncertified information. This aspect suggests that information posted and shared over social media may not give a full description of the character and professional standpoints of followers in the case of Facebook.

In the context of the codes of ethics of the ACS, using social media to acquire information about a given job applicant implies that the recruiting team would use the media to draw inferences and conclusions about the job applicants’ ethical and moral attributes required to fit in the organisation.

According to the Australian Computer Society (2013), these attributes “uphold and advance the honour, dignity, and effectiveness of being a professional” (par.1). Successful candidates would also require adhering to provisions of the law and codes of conducts established by ACS ethical and professional conduct regulations.

Holding dignity, capacity for effectiveness and professionalism implies that successful members of the ACS should always provide authenticated, valid and reliable information (Australian Computer Society, 2012). Unfortunately, the information available over the social media fails to meet these requirements.

Some recruiters deploy social media as means of screening and profiling the candidates. In the context of ACS, this aspect is arguably a bad practice since individual profiles created over social media such as Twitter and Facebook, among other social networking sites, are principally meant for personal use.

Information provided over the social media also presents the professional qualities of an individual inaccurately. Tavani (2011) holds that any potential candidate reserves the right for evaluation in the context of a given job opening requirements based on the correct and accurate information about his or her professional expertise.

Organisations should gauge the appropriateness of a given employee to fit in a given job position depending on the information provided freely and willingly by the applicant. Otherwise, any attempt to seek additional information elsewhere would amount to infringement of privacy rights of employees (Tavani, 2011).

In fact, if an applicant wanted to make personal information public and present it as the basis for making recruitment decisions, s/he would provide it freely or even provide links to his/her social media accounts. The intent of an organisation to invade the privacy of employees is also questionable.

In this context, Sabin (2013) argues that many “people feel that employers looking their Facebook and Twitter profiles are invading their privacy, and would no longer wish to work for a company which has done this” (p.241). This assertion suggests that even if it is important for employers to acquire the information about potential employees, there are limits to the degree of looking for such information.

Discussion of ethical issues involved (positives and negatives)

Talented and potentially productive employees can have ethical attributes required in the ACS code of professional practice, but due to the social interactivity nature of the social media and for other reasons apart from professional practice, they put differing attributes in their profiles in an effort to satisfy and fit in the conversations over the social media.

From the social contract paradigm, engagement in any profession implies entering into a contract with the society with the noble mandate of enhancing collective development of the society (Lessnoff, 1986).

Any ethical requirements for fitting in a particular profession therefore require an individual to portray those attributes in all interaction platforms. In testing for compliance with this ethical requirement, it sounds imperative to conduct social media search for information about potential employees seeking to join ACS.

Social media platforms constitute an important way of contacting many people both rapidly and in a cost effective manner (Sabin, 2013, p.235). For instance, generally, LinkedIn constitutes an acceptable mechanism of evaluating potential candidates for a given job opening within an organisation.

LinkedIn voluntarily publishes past employment details of people. Using such information to inform the decision of recruitment, however, exposes an organisation to the question of reliability and dependability on such information to provide true account of the information publisher.

In a body like the ACS, where honesty encompasses important ethical codes of conduct, depending on social media profiles and using social media in recruitment put at stake the interest of the stakeholders of an organisation in the information sector.

In situations where potential employees get jobs after successful screening through social media, the impression created is that social media can act as an important tool for placing an individual in the job market. For unsuccessful stakeholders, ethical concerns of discrimination arise, on the other hand. Sabin (2013) develops this argument by claiming that recruitment via social media amounts to discrimination and infringement of rights for equal access to employment.

The demographic traits of people who use social media fail to reflect those of the general population. For instance, according to the study conducted in the USA on 19 sites of social media, ”25 percent of the users aged between 35 years and 44 years while 55 years and 64 years accounted for only 64 percent, while 18 years and 24 years accounted for only 9 percent” (Burmeister, 2000, p.21).

Based on age demographics, these findings show that negating other factors such as race and gender, social media recruitment may be unethical as it may create discrimination.

Safeguards for stakeholders if the practice became a hiring standard

Screening to recruit employees over social media may become the ACS industry standard, but if adoption of such standard occurs, provision of appropriate safeguards for stakeholders is important. Profiling of employees should only be done over social media sites dealing with a given nature of connections. For instance, LinkedIn is an example of a resourceful social networking site for profiling employees’ professionalism and experience.

Second, employees should have awareness that an organisation that they seek to apply for a job in utilises social media as a mechanism of their profiling. With this awareness, intentional posting of profiles not reflective of an individual’s professional qualities can be avoided during the time of employment application.

Consequently, recruitment through social media can meet rights-based ethical theory expectations of any two parties entering into a contract. Otherwise, as it stands now, it is not ethical for employers to search social media for information about applicants for a job.

References

Australian Computer Society. (2012). ACS code of ethics case studies and related clauses to the code of conduct. Melbourne, Australia: Australian Computer Society.

Australian Computer Society. (2013). Members Conduct. Retrieved from https://www.acs.org.au/home.html

Burmeister, K. (2000). Applying the ACS Code of Ethics. Journal of Research and Practice in Information Technology, 32(2) 1-54.

Lessnoff, M. (1986). Social contract. New York, NY: Macmillan.

Locke, J. (2003). Two Treatises of Government and a Letter Concerning Toleration. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Sabin, N. (2013). Ethics of recruiting through social media. Journal of Human Resource Management, 3(2), 234-251.

Tavani, H. (2011). Ethics and technology: Controversies, questions, and strategies for ethical computing. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley.

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