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Anyone ever had a prospective employer read their blog?
TimC - 6/1/12 at 09:25 AM

As above. A quick look at my stats shows that I've been searched-for which kind-of makes sense.

Interesting.

mad4x4 - 6/1/12 at 09:43 AM

Better than reading your facebook!. Imagine the people that post about being out on the lash 7 days a week and to hungover to go to work (including photos) or slag off there boss/work/customers.....

TimC - 6/1/12 at 09:46 AM

quote:
Originally posted by mad4x4
Better than reading your facebook!. Imagine the people that post about being out on the lash 7 days a week and to hungover to go to work (including photos) or slag off there boss/work/customers.....


Don't do FB for that type of reason. Am on Twitter but have only posted 3 racing related messages ever I think - and directed at folk.

pewe - 6/1/12 at 09:54 AM

Currently there's an Employment Tribunal in Reading based on what an employer picked up from job website.
A BG employee was according to him "constructively dismissed" for commenting adversely about his employer and saying he was looking for "employment opportunities".
Case continues.
Big Brother IS watching you!
Cheers, Pewe10

twybrow - 6/1/12 at 10:12 AM

I always do a Google search of people I am interviewing. I check for them on LinkedIn and Facebook - it gives you a different way to assess whther people may fit your role...

TimC - 6/1/12 at 10:18 AM

quote:
Originally posted by twybrow
I always do a Google search of people I am interviewing. I check for them on LinkedIn and Facebook - it gives you a different way to assess whther people may fit your role...


Likewise actually but it makes me wonder about whether my online presence is sensible.

HowardB - 6/1/12 at 10:26 AM

I think that there is a place to be reasonable and a place for light hearted joviality.

For example having an open profile and posting infammatory remarks would be foolish, but having a pseudonym on a forum makes it less likely to be linked to your "real life"

I searched online for the people that I interviewed recently, and whilst it wouldn't necessarily be good cause for not interviewing, after all there are many people with the same names, even in the same village, company or organisation.


Benzine - 6/1/12 at 10:28 AM

Deed poll your name to something like Erectile Dysfunction or Piles Cream then see if they search for you

edit: deed

[Edited on 6-1-2012 by Benzine]

loggyboy - 6/1/12 at 10:38 AM

lol @ deep poll.... sound like a movie i saw once as a teenager....

designer - 6/1/12 at 10:40 AM

quote:

I always do a Google search of people I am interviewing. I check for them on LinkedIn and Facebook - it gives you a different way to assess whther people may fit your role...


That is a totally wrong thing to do as you will pre-judge them and anyway, people write rubbish on FB and Twit. Give them a star if they are not on there; means they have a life!

You should knows if they are the right person the minute you meet them.

matt_gsxr - 6/1/12 at 10:44 AM

Interestingly this does open up some interesting ideas for improving ones employment prospects.

What you put on your blog can be embellished or complete lies ("another 90hour week, but I just love working", "won a big contract at work", obviously putting lies into your CV should be an offence for which you should be dismissed, but lies on the WWW, well there are no rules out there.

So, why not have a parallel (easily found) blog that makes you more employable than ever.

TAZZMAXX - 6/1/12 at 10:45 AM

quote:
Originally posted by loggyboy
lol @ deep poll.... sound like a movie i saw once as a teenager....


You don't happen to know where I could get a copy of that from? It's always been one I'd quite like to see

A company I do contract work for has just dismissed a second employee for putting up remarks on FB about fellow employees and the company itself. I am not on FB at all and can live without it but I am always careful not to include any personal content when posting on forums. Unless you personally know other forum users why would you? It's exposing your life to people you don't know.

I've never Googled myself either.

MikeFellows - 6/1/12 at 10:57 AM

I'm a big believer in in being very careful what you post on the web and things are only getting worse (and I work in the industry)

everything you post on the web is identifiable to you and its now getting to the point that a picture of you is now identifiable even if you didnt post it - so not having a facebook/twitter account makes no difference.

say you come for a job interview and I ask to take a picture of you so i can member who you are relevant to your cv (not unreasonable I dont believe and I dont know anyone who would refuse). the facial recognition tech is getting so good I could use that image to search out pics of you on the web. I can search your email address and probably pick up the odd username for forums - many people use the same username so wont take me long to find out more info than you may want an employer to know.

a real world example of something similar to this.

a few year ago Yahoo thought it would be nice and post all its search data created by its users, it thought it had done a good thing and made the data anonymous. however every person had a unique identifier - just no personal details.

The New York times took the data and picked a single unique identifier and looked through all the searches. 6 hours later they knocked on a womans door hundreds of miles away (cant remeber where now) and told her all about her life to the point that they told her she had cancer. they hit the nail on the head with everything except the cancer - she had been researching it for a friend. yahoo promptly apologised and never released any more data.

people should be very careful - but its the kids out there that I feel sorry for - some of what they post online at 13 - 16 could come back to haunt them for the rest of there lives!

contaminated - 6/1/12 at 11:05 AM

I need to be a bit careful here, but I think that since all this information is available on the internet, as a prospective employer you'd be daft not to use it. I always Google people I'm thinking of interviewing. About six months ago I did just that and found out that this particular person had served time for a very unpleasant crime indeed. Needless to say I didn't proceed with the interview - but that got me wondering whether that would in itself be regarded as discrimination if his/her offence was now a spent conviction and didn't need to be declared under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. To complete the exercise I spoke to my HR dept. (who I get on well with) and found out that we don't actually have that section about previous convictions in our appliocation form. I was a bit shocked by that - although admittedly under the RoO Act you don't have to decalre a spent conviction for most proffessions.

designer - 6/1/12 at 11:20 AM

Seems to be a lot of pre-judging and discrimination going on today by you 'professionals'

MikeFellows - 6/1/12 at 11:21 AM

quote:
Originally posted by designer
Seems to be a lot of pre-judging and discrimination going on today by you 'professionals'


are you really naive enough to think that it wouldnt?

designer - 6/1/12 at 11:30 AM

Naive!

Thanks for the insult.

I ran companies for twenty years and it didn't and it shouldn't.

MikeFellows - 6/1/12 at 11:34 AM

quote:
Originally posted by designer
Naive!

Thanks for the insult.

I ran companies for twenty years and it didn't and it shouldn't.


good for you

but I honestly done believe I have worked anywhere that didnt have some discrimination/sexism/racism or a combination of all 3 - im not saying its right or wrong but it happens

bobinspain - 6/1/12 at 11:41 AM

quote:
Originally posted by MikeFellows
quote:
Originally posted by designer
Seems to be a lot of pre-judging and discrimination going on today by you 'professionals'


are you really naive enough to think that it wouldnt?



Problem is, the genie's out of the bottle.
Won't go back of its own volition.

HowardB, You say, "there's a place to be reasonable and a place for light-hearted joviality."
Are they mutually exclusive then?

contaminated - 6/1/12 at 11:42 AM

quote:
Originally posted by designer
Seems to be a lot of pre-judging and discrimination going on today by you 'professionals'


That's sort of the point though isn't it? The fact that so much information is now available means it's difficult not to judge.

In all seriousness are you suggesting that I'm showing a lack of professionalism by choosing one candidate over another because one of them hasn't been convicted of (in this case) a sexual crime?! I would have thought the fact that most application forms (perfectly legally) ask for details of previous convictions do so precisely so an employer can make an informed decision. If you were honestly willing to overlook a serious crime just to take the moral high ground I'm not sure I want to be any more proffessional than I am!

mcerd1 - 6/1/12 at 11:50 AM

quote:
Originally posted by MikeFellows
I'm a big believer in in being very careful what you post on the web and things are only getting worse

I've always tried to be careful myself for the same reasons....

if you search my e-mail on on google you get zero hits and I've had the same address for 12 years
if you search my name you'll only find one hit thats the real me at an old address (and thats on some site with the old voters roles)

so far I think I'm doing quite well. I'm sure if someone with a bit more knowhow searched they'd get something, but I don't go around the tinternet slagging off my employer etc. anyway



[Edited on 6/1/2012 by mcerd1]

femster87 - 6/1/12 at 12:58 PM

I try as much as possible to avoid it. But I have come to the conclusion that its a losing battle, there is quite a lot of personal information out there. It's worth a lot so people would trade.

I never slag off the company I work for on the net, just avoiding trouble

ReMan - 6/1/12 at 01:04 PM

quote:
Originally posted by contaminated
quote:
Originally posted by designer
Seems to be a lot of pre-judging and discrimination going on today by you 'professionals'


That's sort of the point though isn't it? The fact that so much information is now available means it's difficult not to judge.

In all seriousness are you suggesting that I'm showing a lack of professionalism by choosing one candidate over another because one of them hasn't been convicted of (in this case) a sexual crime?! I would have thought the fact that most application forms (perfectly legally) ask for details of previous convictions do so precisely so an employer can make an informed decision. If you were honestly willing to overlook a serious crime just to take the moral high ground I'm not sure I want to be any more proffessional than I am!


Yes they may ask for details of convictions, but as spent convictions I believe they do not have to declare them.

If the applicant could prove that this had been used to pre-select then I suspect that the prospective employer could now face a call of discrimination?

D Beddows - 6/1/12 at 01:52 PM

In my experience most of my actual real life friends' Facebook/twitter personas are pretty close to who they actually are so there are two ways of looking at it:

1. would you want to work for a company where you really wouldn't fit in (obviously that's a bit subjective depending on whether the person doing the searching/interviewing fits in at the company themselves!)

2. If you come across as a work shy trouble maker who's always out on the p*ss and whinging about everything and everyone on Facebook/Twitter/Forums then you probably actually are a work shy trouble maker who's always out on the p*ss and whinging about everything and everyone........ most companies are usually overstaffed with them as it is..........

Trying to hide yourself from the internet is a loosing battle, if you're sensible and just be yourself it's not going to be the end of the world........unless you actually are complete tw*t obviously in which case I would throw away your computer now or you're never getting another job!

scudderfish - 6/1/12 at 02:03 PM

If you have more CVs for a position than you can realistically expect to interview, what is wrong with using publically accessible information to winnow it down?

twybrow - 6/1/12 at 04:17 PM

quote:
Originally posted by designer
quote:

I always do a Google search of people I am interviewing. I check for them on LinkedIn and Facebook - it gives you a different way to assess whther people may fit your role...


That is a totally wrong thing to do as you will pre-judge them and anyway, people write rubbish on FB and Twit. Give them a star if they are not on there; means they have a life!

You should knows if they are the right person the minute you meet them.


Why is it totally wrong? As an employer, I want to understand as much about a prospective employee as possible, be it from the interview, their CV, a reference, a personailty test or by their activity on the internet. I would not be doing my job properly, if I didn't use all of the sources of information available to me, to make an informed decision. If you make a decision 'the minute you meet them' as to whether someone is right or not for your role, I would say you are judging a book by it's cover - it is not a love at first sight issue, you and your colleagues have to work with this person, so why shouldn't you see what information is out there to aid your decision making process...?

snapper - 6/1/12 at 04:26 PM

Saying anything online is no different from saying it out loud.
If you comments are open for anyone to see, don't say anything controversial.

It still amazes me what people write in text and email, it's not secure.

Marcus - 6/1/12 at 07:48 PM

If you have loads of CVs to wade through, just throw half of them in the bin. Saves employing unlucky people

Ninehigh - 6/1/12 at 08:09 PM

Like has been posted what happens when somebody doesn't get employed because of one comment made years ago? Turns out some people have pictures of me being rather drunk and they're available to see.

However if you google my name you come up with a basketball player, a lighting technician in the west end and a councillor for Ashby de la Zouch... Ooh the stuff I could blag

beaver34 - 6/1/12 at 08:15 PM

How is that legal?

Your not allowed to ask there marital status, you carnt ask age, sexuality the list goes on for recruiting staff......

So seems stupid that you can research person and you make a decsision based what is wrote on the internet that might not even be them writing it!

Ninehigh - 6/1/12 at 09:03 PM

I suppose it's only similar to being at the same pub as your prospective employee, only to see the guy murder the karaoke, set himself on fire with flaming sambuca then start a fight with a lamppost.

designer - 7/1/12 at 08:53 AM

I have read this topic many times and am still amazed how you 'professionals' can pre-judge people by what's on the web!

Obviously they think the 'dross' written on Facebook and such is relevant, or that a Haynes Roadster owner is more worthy than a Robin Hood, or Dutton owner! Don't laugh, some on here do think that way!