“We only recruit boring, beige corporate-type people. We only emply conformant drones with no passion for anything. It can be assumed that out staff will be second or third rate talents as a result of this, and we therefore recommend you do not buy our products or services. We also believe employment discrimination leglislation does not apply to us”
“Alternatively, we might just be a bunch of trolls, because this did come from a comment the Daily Mail website”.
(Thanks to Mikko Hypponen on Twitter for the link)
I’m sure they’ll have no trouble finding “non-political” individuals in the West. All two of them.
Unless you’re some kind of violent extremist, political views ought to be completely irrelevant unless you want to work for a political party.
Of course, “Non-political” often means “Different from our (conservative) politics”.
What sort of recruitment department believes that people who are engaging in activities likely to bring a company into disrepute would publish that fact on their Facebook page?
What sort of recruitment department assumes that anything published on the web is obviously not only the truth but the whole truth?
I’m not sure I want anything to do with the sort of people who assume that people who don’t have Facebook pages are axiomatically unsavoury characters.
Surprising the sorts of things I’ve heard people say in public posts on Facebook and Twitter – bitching about management and clients, and making those posts public. Those privacy settings are there for a reason.
Those privacy settings are of limited value if the above mentioned HR and security people can see there is something hidden from them.
That the above annonymous company expect to see the entire site and will not employ someone who has a private area is proof that they expect to be able to detect the existence of such an area.
This does not increase my likelihood of opening a Facebook account.
You could look at it the other way – Would you want to work for someone like Jim Thompson of Seattle? You shouldn’t let a very small number of rogue employers that you’d never be comfortable working for anyway dictate your online presence.
BTW, I hate Facebook, I’m only there because too many friends are on there who have no other online presence. Twitter is far better.
That is a valid point.
I have no idea where the original posting came from, but I suppose it is important that employers and employees agree on this sort of policy.
The snag being that I have no idea which company it is that I don’t want to work for. Seattle is a nice place to visit, and if I had to live in the USA then I suspect it would be the city I would end up in. But I prefer the UK thank you, so this rather odd policy doesn’t really bother me.