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The practice of digital footprint screening is one that some companies perform before or during their hiring process. It basically means to search for an applicant online. This may include social networking sites, blogs, or other available information on the internet.
Having access to the applicant’s personal information that allows company to “know” the applicant quickly. From an utilitarian perspective, an analysis to determine if such an action is ethically acceptable is based on the costs and benefits tied to it. I here offer my analysis from an utilitarian perspective:
Benefits of screening:
- Corroborating statements in application/resume.
- Ruling out people whose personal life is not compatible with the job description (e.g.: if a person being hired for a pastoral position is seen smoking pot in a Facebook photo).
Costs of screening:
- Possibly obtaining untrue or inaccurate information. For example, finding an homonym and assessing the applicant on somebody else’s merits.
- Possibly missing out on somebody that is highly qualified for the job because of facts irrelevant to the job description.
- If the practice is uncovered, applicants may feel betrayed and distrust the company (whether they are or not hired).
From such a perspective, the practice is in fact morally defensible, although the value assigned to each of the benefits/costs may be different according to the person making the analysis.
Using another approach one might lead to a different conclusion. For example, contractarianism looks at ethics by considering the rights that any person has as a human. In fact the analysis I want to make goes a bit beyond contractarianism. Implied in the idea that any person has rights for the simple fact of being a human being is the reality that with such rights there are responsibilities inevitably intertwined. As a person I have the right (and the freedom) to promote myself through disclosure online. If I chose to do so, there is a responsibility to respond for the elements of my person that I choose to reveal. Every time I have had an interview, I have researched the company as much as possible online, and I will base my decision to apply or to accept an offer based on the information available to me. I should assume that any company has the right to do the same towards me.
I appreciate your point about doing research online about a company before you apply or accept a position from any organization, and how that fact is mirrored in an organization investigating us online before making an employment offer. I believe it was about a year ago when several news outlets started reporting that there was a growing trend in job interviews, the candidates were being asked for the passwords to their social media accounts during the interview process. Is it fair? Maybe not, but people need to come to grips with the fact that what we choose to share about ourselves and our opinions online are out there for consumption by a public, even if that public is a closed public of only our family and close friends. An employment offer represents a significant financial risk for a company, and going forward, most will be sensitive to how you represent yourself, and by extension them, online.
Yikes! That is a bit too much I would say. In fact, if a company asked for that I would run out of that interview and never look back. It sounds like a very clear hint that the company does not see a distinction between personal life and work life.
I would agree with the needed forethought in regards to sharing information online. As I mentioned in a previous post, digital media is like analog on steroids, and any piece of info you share can spread like wildfire (think Pinterest). So, a person may intend for the funny photo of their weekend trip to be seen only by a couple friends, and it may end up like a Meme.
I think that asking for one’s password is clearly crossing the line, but I agree that it seems fair for companies to view one’s online profile if it has been made public. I have heard so many individuals say that it is important to watch what you post or what others post about you online. It is amazing to see how many individuals simply ignore this advice. As we have discussed in our class, what is posted online has the potential to stay around for a long time. People often live in the short term, but they should be aware that what they post today might impact tomorrow.
Great thoughts J. In fact, we should consider that many of the people that are creating a huge digital footprint for themselves today are young, very young, too young to have a clue about what they are doing.
Many teenagers and tweens now have access to digital media through cell phones, computers and other devices before they have the mental clarity to truly understand the consequences of what they are doing. So, do you think it is possible to truly clean up one’s digital footprint?
So I would ask the question, in response to your original post Angi, what is the difference between rights and responsibility? If in the contractarian view we have a duty to respect people’s rights, we first have to articulate what those rights are. What are my rights with regards to my digital footprint? Do I have a right to privacy? For example, my Facebook profile (which is actually very boring, but still) is restricted to only people on my friends list. Do I have a right to assume that employers will not use that information (by say getting a friend to show my profile to them)?
What if a potential employer googles an applicant and finds out the person is of a race, ethnicity, or gender that the employer doesn’t like? What is their moral duty there?
I want to focus on one of your questions, to not have a rant-like reply (it comes naturally). Yes, we do have a right of privacy. Naturally, we understand that the rights to life and liberty imply that there is a certain ownership of one’s person, actions, and thoughts. Yet, these negative rights are ours until somebody else interferes with them. If I choose to devalue such right and give up my privacy for the sake of something else (interconnectedness, fun, the chance to play Farmville), then I must take responsibility over the information I put out there as something I don’t really care to cover under my right to privacy. At the same time, if I am explicitly giving a limited group of people access to my information with the understanding that it is not for them to distribute, then the people in such group do have a duty to respect my privacy according to the terms I have chosen (like when I give my SS# to an insurance agent).
Finally, in regards to the last two questions, I don’t believe the issue is finding the information about race, ethnicity, or gender. The ethical issue there is making a judgment on the applicant’s qualifications based on characteristics unrelated to their ability to perform their job. In that case, the right of the employee is to be evaluated as objectively as possible.
An interesting comment is that in Argentina, a resume always includes an applicant’s age, gender, family situation (married/single), and in many cases a photograph!