It can be entertaining to Google the name of a long-lost friend, neighbour or work colleague (don’t forget the ” “) and see what turns up. But it can have business uses as well.
A survey of top executive headhunters, by leading UK executive careers website Experteer.co.uk, found that 86% of recruiters use the Internet to research potential candidates. Interestingly, the balance between finding good and bad news was fairly even at 63% good and 51% bad. Of course this was a survey about senior roles so you would expect there to be a lot out there on the web. Many applying for roles sufficiently senior to be headhunted are likely to be mentioned on company publicity, conference proceedings, charity committees and the like. They are probably too old to have embarrassing student pranks on facebook. Nor is it surprising that 86% of headhunters do search for information. They have a reputation to loose if a ”bad ‘un’ is put forward to clients. More odd that the other 14% do not.
But what about your own in-house recruitment? Do you routinely search the net for information about candidates? If not, why not? Should you search on all staff, just senior staff, security staff? Do you pay for a service company to check out staff for you? Do you think it is improper to do so?
October 29, 2008 at 7:23 pm |
If the intention is to be sneaky, then it is unethical – undoubtedly. If the intention is to marry the interests of both parties, it is useful to get to know someone. The candidates are googling everyone in the company and looking up your stats too on platforms like LinkedIn.
A consideration that you haven’t taken is the impact on selection. Major considerations in selection are using relevant information and avoiding bias. If the combination of the two processes (online search and selection) isn’t managed properly, the selection system will degenerate, ultimately both defeating the purpose and in all likelihood be discriminatory.
October 30, 2008 at 9:43 am |
In this particular post I have shied away from making a hard recommendation. Mainly because of the logistics of routine Internet searches – especially if the candidate has a common name. But it is awfully easy in chasing fairness in recruitment practices to forget about the duty to be fair to the employer (see Web 2.0 to you in the June archive).