Social Profiling

More and more employers are using social networking sites, looking up potential employee's profiles, and determining if they want to interview or hire them based on what they post online. This practice of pre-employment vetting needs to stop and be made illegal.

It's absurd to know that while you still may have a stellar resume and several references claiming that you are a great employee or student, posted pictures that shed a not so professional light on you may land your application into the trash bin instead of landing you a call back for a interview.

Instead of judging you on your application and resume, employers are judging your social life.

Is it unreasonable to ask an employer to ignore what they've seen on your online profile? No, because your social life outside of the workplace is none of their business, and employers may be violating several laws.

If an employer decides to not hire someone based on information found on the Internet, they could be accused of violating discrimination laws, for instance, by not hiring people of a certain race or sexual orientation.

Other laws employers could be violating are privacy laws and the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which regulates how background searches are conducted.

It is difficult to prove that an employer is violating the law by using your profile as a vetting tool though, so stopping them from using this practice is nearly impossible.

If employers will not stop pre-screening applicants with social networking sites, they should at least allow you to defend yourself instead of automatically ruling you out because they saw something they didn't like posted on your online profile.

Yes, an applicant could avoid these potential issues by ensuring that their profile settings are made private. Perhaps that is a precaution that Internet users need to be more diligent in considering, but a social networking site is assumed to be a place to make friends and meet people, whether or not that has to do with the workplace.

The bottom line is your social life, offline and online, should be private from employers. It's a shame that many employers see online profiles as an opportunity for weeding out potential employees.

My advice for students who are seeking jobs: create two profiles, one private and one public, professional profile.