Asking for the voluntary surrender of a potential hire’s Facebook password is a growing trend among businesses and hiring managers. Facebook has created a world that has the ability to give businesses a glimpse at what a candidate is like behind their resume, and to achieve this, companies are putting the pressure on employees to fork over the 5-10 digit key to their privacy.
Sounds like a great idea, right? Wrong.
Facebook is pushing back on businesses who are trying to gain access to potential hires personal pages, calling it an invasion of privacy, and threatening to take legal action. A spokesperson for the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU, likened the request to view hires Facebook pages to a business requesting to open the mail of their employees (an act that is obviously against the law).
Has your business used Facebook as a reference before hiring an applicant? What other resources do you rely on? Google? LinkedIn? Personal and professional references?
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