I think you would have been justified saying "This requirement is ethically suspect, I will not be a party to it, and if the business requires otherwise then our time together is at an end.", even if semi-coercively browsing folks' Facebooks was demonstrably a wonderful idea for the business. That said, bully for you, and if it takes more than thirty seconds to line up a new position in this market I'm sure many of us would be willing to assist.
I am not now, nor will I ever be, an employee of a company that compels a Director of Development to follow HR edicts about hiring practices without mutually respectful consultation.
The #1 job of HR is to make sure they don't get their asses sued or fined for violating hiring and employment law. The #2 job is to help hire and retain good people. What raganwald's fictional letter shows is that inspecting private Facebook posts means that both job functions are compromised far more than helped. It's the kind of argument that gets the attention of people who may not be moved by ethical arguments.
I read the ethical objection as a pretty clear subtext. There’s a powerfully condescending tone here – “Since you clearly can’t make the right choice out of basic decency, let me put this in words you might understand”.
Its as simple as "There are certain questions you can't ask during job interviews". Its been illegal to ask these questions for 20 years, and nearly no one disputes this. A peak at the prospect's Facebook page answers all of them. This should be the biggest no-brainer in HR history.
NOTE: I don't think employers should be allowed to ask for special access to a candidate's Facebook page. I'm not arguing for Facebook access below, but rather I'm arguing that I don't necessary think current law can be construed to prevent it.
I'm not convinced that theory is correct. There's a difference between asking a prohibited question, and acquiring the answer to a prohibited question incidental to something else.
To give an obvious example, you can't ask about race and sex, but the employer is going to find out that information at the face to face interviewer by simply observing the candidate.
Or consider criminal background checks, which are allowed in some states. A criminal background check might turn up information that makes a candidate's sexual orientation, national origin, or religion apparent.
I don't think that an employer would find themselves in legal trouble for doing a criminal background check that turned up that information, because they weren't doing the background check to acquire the prohibited information.
As a practical matter, though, even if it is legal to look at Facebook, it is a bad idea. Suppose you do not hire a candidate, and the candidate sues claiming that you didn't hire them because of their marital status. During discover, the plaintiff finds some emails between employees containing disparaging remarks about people of his status.
If you have not looked at Facebook or otherwise snooped into their private life, you will offer as part of your defense that you did not know their marital status, and so could not possibly have discriminated on that basis. Even if you do have some managers who dislike people of the plaintiff's status, they could not have acted on that dislike in this case.
If you have snooped, then you no longer have that defense. You are in the much less desirable position of having to argue that your people (who have been caught disparaging people of plaintiff's status) did not use that information, even though they did have access to it.
I can easily see this being the difference between a plaintiff win and a defendant win.
Precisely. I hope that there are some hungry lawyers out there smelling blood in the water 'cause this is easy stuff.
In an interview you can't ask how old someone is, where they were born, what religion they are, and a zillion other things, all of which are blatantly plastered all over the average person's facebook profile.
Well, I don't think that point alone is all that compelling. People put all sorts of "off-limit question" info on their personal blogs too. Does that mean it would somehow be unethical or illegal to look at a prospective candidate's personal blog that turned up in a web search?
While I would certainly not put up with a company asking for access to my private online content, it's not clear that it's illegal for them to do so just because it may contain information that can't legally be used to make a hiring decision.
> Its as simple as "There are certain questions you can't ask during job interviews". Its been illegal to ask these questions for 20 years, and nearly no one disputes this.
It's not that simple. Facebook is not the only way a prospective employer could find out those details. For example, some jobs do thorough background checks (imagine, for a security position) that no one doubts the legality of, and you could answer many of those same questions that way too. If the prospective employer learns that info, they're simply expected to disregard it while making their hiring decision, the same as they'd be expected to if they learned that info from your PUBLIC facebook page (which again no one can doubt is legal to check).
Stealing facebook login details does expose the company to greater liability claims in this regard, but merely uncovering those protected questions is not illegal.
Instead I suggest approaching Facebook login theft as a case of tortious interference, and an invasion of privacy both for the stolen account owner and anyone on their friends list. Employment discrimination will both be hard to prove, and should be settled on a case by case basis rather than legislated out of existence.
All questions are legal to ask. What's illegal is discriminating on the basis of certain answers. The reason not to ask is to avoid being the target of a witch hunt.
This is why competent background checks are conducted by a security officer who produces nothing but a list of disqualifications along with the factual evidence to back them up. ("The candidate appears to engage in the unlawful use of mind altering drugs. [Facebook photo of bong use attached.]")
Even though the content of the letter wasn't anything new (the same thing we've been reading about frequently on HN and other tech sites in the last couple of weeks) I found that it was well written (and chilling!) to the point where if I needed to explain to someone why it is so bad for employers to request Facebook access, this is the page I would send them to.
Great read, thanks for taking the time to write it :)
I have been reading about this and it not only seems like an absurd invasion of privacy, but in violation of several federal employment laws. Being somewhat familiar with employment law, I would be nervous to ask a prospective employee ANYTHING that was not directly related to past work or the position in question. Employment law is one of the most murky and sensitive areas of the law, and I'm convinced that the only reason there aren't more lawsuits is that most people simply don't know their rights.
Let me cite a specific example. I once sat in on a lecture by a former attorney-turned successful media entrepreneur who owned a fairly successful magazine. During a routine interview for an art director position, one of her staff members who was conducting the interview noticed that the candidate was wearing a Yarmulke. She said something to the effect of "During certain seasonal spikes, we have a huge increase in workload that can extend into the weekends. I see that you're Jewish, and I am too. Do you think working on weekends is something you can do?"
The interview concluded, and they exchanged goodbyes. The interviewer expressed interest but asked the candidate to send over some work samples, but the samples never came. Instead, after a few weeks a letter arrived from the candidate's attorney informing the magazine that they were being sued. They settled out of court for nearly $50,000.
That seems pretty egregious and the woman was pretty naive to bring up such a sensitive matter in an interview, but I don't see how it's any worse than demanding to see somebody's protected Facebook account.
I have a stupid question. Has anyone ever been asked this in an interview? Or knows anyone that has been asked/asked this question? I've been reading a lot about this situation over the last month, but have never heard anyone say it happened to them or someone they know. Just stories that seem like rumors/gossip.
I do not know many people who are right out of college and interviewing (and that's who I assume would be asked this sort of question), so maybe my network is too small to have heard of it happening.
Also, I realize many people will sign NDAs about the interview process, I am not looking for juicy details of when/where/how it happened. I'd just love to know if people actually had this happen at one point in the last few years.
This exact same process is what kept me from applying to ycombinator this year. Asking for my Facebook url is the same considering everyone at ycombinator has whatever access they need.
Raised $20k in two weeks on my own instead, for a much less percentage than ycombinator would have.
Kinda worried that you run your own business and dont understand the difference between a link to your public fb profile and the login information to your fb profile. I guess it can be explained by the fact that you came here to diss YC, why do it in any sort of logical manner when you can say something moronic instead?
Asking for a URL is nothing like demanding access to the account. Anything available to the public under your profile could be found with a name search, providing it just simplifies the process.
I find it infuriating that his argument against facebook spying isn't "this is wrong", but "we will have to hire dead weight, and could be exposed to legal liability." I of course don't mean to criticize the author personally; it's just sad how far culture has slid that this is the go-to argument.
Can someone explain in reasonable terms, why an HR manager would would choose to enact a policy that requires perspective employees to surrender their Facebook activity as a condition of employment?
I am really trying to understand what logical motivation is directing this latest craze. Was it a recent HR conference session that sold HR managers on the idea? An article written in an HR trade journal that cited definitive stats that sealed the argument?
The published examples that I have seen were teachers and prison guards. Employers of these folks want evidence of fraternization with students and inmate families, respectively.
Asking at an interview is crazy - all it does is open you upto lawsuits.
I have worked at places that do Google tracking of your name/company email/company name.
I only discovered this when I posted on a tech support forum for a product we use, using my company email. Then got dragged before HR because "any corporate publication", including apparently my support request needs to be approved by legal!
I can see a short step to tracking FB/blog/twitter of employees to check they aren't saying anything about the company.
I don't have a facebook account. I used to, but stopped using it about 4 years ago. I am looking forward to the day someone asks me that question. I wonder what their reaction is going to be. Possible scenarios:
- They will believe me, drop the subject.
- They will ask to see my twitter/linkedin/etc. account instead.
- They will think that I am lying and stop the interview process, which is the most dangerous one.
100% it'll be the later...it's expected that you have a facebook account..if you don't they'll just think you are lying...and it must be REALLY bad for you to lie about it...you are probably a drug user, or worse
Do you know why small startups/companies don't have an HR person right off the bat? It is because the damn concept is demeaning at the very least.
Who wants to be thought of as a "resource"? Above all else I feel like culture fit is the #1 priority in hiring someone. And if a company's culture encourages peeking into peoples' private lives that is disgraceful.
The modern corporation is a vestige of the 1900s where factory workers all had to show up to a central location and toil for hours on end.
Is it possible to create a future where a "company" has thousands of employees but still retain all the benefits of a small group? Already we see it happening. Perhaps the 21st century will bring about this dynamic shift.
The reason you'd want an HR person would be to keep the company from accidentally doing illegal stuff like what happens in this story. Startups can get away with it because they're small with few assets and their legal risks around hiring are smallish compared to their many other risks. As companies get larger, statistically rare events become more likely and at the same time they have more to lose.
So I'd say no, it's not possible in a large company to get by without HR, but there's still a lot of ways to improve the process.
I am not planning on being interviewed for a new job any time soon. Despite that, when the whole "Facebook disclosure during interview/hire" topic broke, I began preparing my short list of ways to act indignant/offended or to lay on some thick sarcasm that gets across just how horrible they should feel for even suggesting something of the sort.
This blows everything I had out of the water. Props for the creativity and execution.
As someone about to graduate college and interviewing at a number of firms I'm sort of hoping one of them asks for my Facebook password so I can laugh in their face while I accept one of the other several offers I've received.
Now of course, you would never refuse to hire someone because they plan to exercise their legal right to parental leave, would you?
I'm sympathetic to the principal message of this post, but regarding the bit about parental leave: Has it really come to this? If someone takes a job intending to "exercise their legal right to parental leave" shortly after joining, it's the company that's the bad guy for wanting to stop it? To my eye, such behavior identifies the employee a special interest parasite, feeding at the public trough with a smug sense of entitlement.
It's effectively illegal to ask a job applicant, "Are you intending to take an extended paid vacation shortly after starting?" That's not progress—it's madness.
... unless, of course, you happen to be in that narrow window in life where it is optimal for you or your partner to have children. A woman's biological clock waits for no job.
Here in Canada, parental leave is self-paid through Employment Insurance at a rate that is proportional to our income in the previous year. The employer does not pay directly---they do, however, need enough flexibility in staffing to accommodate new parents.
I've thought about this a lot and I can't really come to any alternative solutions.
Three months ago you found out you're pregnant. Finally! you'd been trying for almost a year! Today you walk into work and find out the company is bankrupt, clean out your desk.
What are you supposed to to? Not look for a job for 6-7 months? Tell every prospective employer you're happy to start now, but in a few weeks you'll be out on prolonged leave?
The only possible thing that they can do with that information is discriminate.
I actually think this is a great point. As much as I completely agree with the letter, the idea that the first thing job applicants do is threaten me with legal action for something they presume I will do doesn't really inspire much confidence in me that they are good people or that they will contribute much to the organization.
Yes, it is the company's fault. The law regarding parental/maternity leave varies by jurisdiction, but raganwald is in Canada, and parental leave, complete with job protection, is a legal right. It's not madness nor parasitic -- it just shows your moral compass is not entirely compatible with employment laws in Canada. ;)
Extended paid vacation is a different story -- employers are not obligated to approve your vacation request. Also, many companies have policies on how (paid) vacation days are incurred, especially during the first year. Having said that, most people I know would disclose any previously planned extended travel plans with the potential employer, both out of courtesy to the employer and as a condition of accepting the job.
The Nixon resignation letter was a nice touch. Perhaps the most interesting of times arises when firmly entrenched control structures are threatened. The Facebook login fiasco, and it is a fiasco, is one such example.
This post points more to the absurdly litigious nature of hiring/firing. It's an interesting exploration of the matter. Approaching the problem of employee privacy at an oblique angle. It won't scare any HR departments though. Most have systems in place to create reasons for not hiring or firing. All that you've guaranteed is that the HR person will be making all hiring decisions.
Fundamentally your best defense against discrimination is being too good to ignore.
That may be the best defense against discrimination, but many people are discriminated against who simply aren't that good, yet are still good enough to deserve to make some kind of living at some kind of job.
Is this a common thing in US? I can't think of any good reason for an employer to get access to a prospective employees account. Sounds like the equivalent of asking to access a person's home to make sure it is well kept and that they have good taste.
I would never coerce anyone to look through their Facebook account (or email, or personal photo album, or their journal, etc) under any circumstance, especially a job interview where the candidate feels pressured to be obliging. What a shameful act!
[+] [-] patio11|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raganwald|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jiry|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] celoyd|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noonespecial|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tzs|14 years ago|reply
I'm not convinced that theory is correct. There's a difference between asking a prohibited question, and acquiring the answer to a prohibited question incidental to something else.
To give an obvious example, you can't ask about race and sex, but the employer is going to find out that information at the face to face interviewer by simply observing the candidate.
Or consider criminal background checks, which are allowed in some states. A criminal background check might turn up information that makes a candidate's sexual orientation, national origin, or religion apparent.
I don't think that an employer would find themselves in legal trouble for doing a criminal background check that turned up that information, because they weren't doing the background check to acquire the prohibited information.
As a practical matter, though, even if it is legal to look at Facebook, it is a bad idea. Suppose you do not hire a candidate, and the candidate sues claiming that you didn't hire them because of their marital status. During discover, the plaintiff finds some emails between employees containing disparaging remarks about people of his status.
If you have not looked at Facebook or otherwise snooped into their private life, you will offer as part of your defense that you did not know their marital status, and so could not possibly have discriminated on that basis. Even if you do have some managers who dislike people of the plaintiff's status, they could not have acted on that dislike in this case.
If you have snooped, then you no longer have that defense. You are in the much less desirable position of having to argue that your people (who have been caught disparaging people of plaintiff's status) did not use that information, even though they did have access to it.
I can easily see this being the difference between a plaintiff win and a defendant win.
[+] [-] InclinedPlane|14 years ago|reply
In an interview you can't ask how old someone is, where they were born, what religion they are, and a zillion other things, all of which are blatantly plastered all over the average person's facebook profile.
[+] [-] bostonpete|14 years ago|reply
While I would certainly not put up with a company asking for access to my private online content, it's not clear that it's illegal for them to do so just because it may contain information that can't legally be used to make a hiring decision.
[+] [-] reductionist|14 years ago|reply
It's not that simple. Facebook is not the only way a prospective employer could find out those details. For example, some jobs do thorough background checks (imagine, for a security position) that no one doubts the legality of, and you could answer many of those same questions that way too. If the prospective employer learns that info, they're simply expected to disregard it while making their hiring decision, the same as they'd be expected to if they learned that info from your PUBLIC facebook page (which again no one can doubt is legal to check).
Stealing facebook login details does expose the company to greater liability claims in this regard, but merely uncovering those protected questions is not illegal.
Instead I suggest approaching Facebook login theft as a case of tortious interference, and an invasion of privacy both for the stolen account owner and anyone on their friends list. Employment discrimination will both be hard to prove, and should be settled on a case by case basis rather than legislated out of existence.
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Daniel_Newby|14 years ago|reply
This is why competent background checks are conducted by a security officer who produces nothing but a list of disqualifications along with the factual evidence to back them up. ("The candidate appears to engage in the unlawful use of mind altering drugs. [Facebook photo of bong use attached.]")
[+] [-] endianswap|14 years ago|reply
Great read, thanks for taking the time to write it :)
[+] [-] jberryman|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raganwald|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dkrich|14 years ago|reply
Let me cite a specific example. I once sat in on a lecture by a former attorney-turned successful media entrepreneur who owned a fairly successful magazine. During a routine interview for an art director position, one of her staff members who was conducting the interview noticed that the candidate was wearing a Yarmulke. She said something to the effect of "During certain seasonal spikes, we have a huge increase in workload that can extend into the weekends. I see that you're Jewish, and I am too. Do you think working on weekends is something you can do?"
The interview concluded, and they exchanged goodbyes. The interviewer expressed interest but asked the candidate to send over some work samples, but the samples never came. Instead, after a few weeks a letter arrived from the candidate's attorney informing the magazine that they were being sued. They settled out of court for nearly $50,000.
That seems pretty egregious and the woman was pretty naive to bring up such a sensitive matter in an interview, but I don't see how it's any worse than demanding to see somebody's protected Facebook account.
[+] [-] ryanto|14 years ago|reply
I do not know many people who are right out of college and interviewing (and that's who I assume would be asked this sort of question), so maybe my network is too small to have heard of it happening.
Also, I realize many people will sign NDAs about the interview process, I am not looking for juicy details of when/where/how it happened. I'd just love to know if people actually had this happen at one point in the last few years.
[+] [-] driverdan|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SpiderX|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] burningion|14 years ago|reply
Raised $20k in two weeks on my own instead, for a much less percentage than ycombinator would have.
[+] [-] emmett|14 years ago|reply
Y-Combinator isn't asking for you to give them access to log in as you on Facebook, they're asking for a link to your public page.
[+] [-] davorak|14 years ago|reply
Did they ask for a blog url as well? Was it optional?
Facebook can be used as promotional tool for a business, hence why a Facebook url could be relevant.
[+] [-] ryguytilidie|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] staunch|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] driverdan|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grandalf|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jbrichter|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fleitz|14 years ago|reply
If someone gets $5 million for this it would stop it pretty quick.
[+] [-] blantonl|14 years ago|reply
I am really trying to understand what logical motivation is directing this latest craze. Was it a recent HR conference session that sold HR managers on the idea? An article written in an HR trade journal that cited definitive stats that sealed the argument?
[+] [-] Duff|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blantonl|14 years ago|reply
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3790563
[+] [-] excuse-me|14 years ago|reply
I have worked at places that do Google tracking of your name/company email/company name.
I only discovered this when I posted on a tech support forum for a product we use, using my company email. Then got dragged before HR because "any corporate publication", including apparently my support request needs to be approved by legal!
I can see a short step to tracking FB/blog/twitter of employees to check they aren't saying anything about the company.
[+] [-] carguy1983|14 years ago|reply
Fear. Ignorance. Stupidity. Anachronism.
[+] [-] meaydinli|14 years ago|reply
- They will believe me, drop the subject. - They will ask to see my twitter/linkedin/etc. account instead. - They will think that I am lying and stop the interview process, which is the most dangerous one.
[+] [-] vaksel|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jtchang|14 years ago|reply
Who wants to be thought of as a "resource"? Above all else I feel like culture fit is the #1 priority in hiring someone. And if a company's culture encourages peeking into peoples' private lives that is disgraceful.
The modern corporation is a vestige of the 1900s where factory workers all had to show up to a central location and toil for hours on end.
Is it possible to create a future where a "company" has thousands of employees but still retain all the benefits of a small group? Already we see it happening. Perhaps the 21st century will bring about this dynamic shift.
[+] [-] skybrian|14 years ago|reply
So I'd say no, it's not possible in a large company to get by without HR, but there's still a lot of ways to improve the process.
[+] [-] chao-|14 years ago|reply
This blows everything I had out of the water. Props for the creativity and execution.
[+] [-] saryant|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mhartl|14 years ago|reply
I'm sympathetic to the principal message of this post, but regarding the bit about parental leave: Has it really come to this? If someone takes a job intending to "exercise their legal right to parental leave" shortly after joining, it's the company that's the bad guy for wanting to stop it? To my eye, such behavior identifies the employee a special interest parasite, feeding at the public trough with a smug sense of entitlement.
It's effectively illegal to ask a job applicant, "Are you intending to take an extended paid vacation shortly after starting?" That's not progress—it's madness.
[+] [-] ppereira|14 years ago|reply
Here in Canada, parental leave is self-paid through Employment Insurance at a rate that is proportional to our income in the previous year. The employer does not pay directly---they do, however, need enough flexibility in staffing to accommodate new parents.
[+] [-] furyg3|14 years ago|reply
Three months ago you found out you're pregnant. Finally! you'd been trying for almost a year! Today you walk into work and find out the company is bankrupt, clean out your desk.
What are you supposed to to? Not look for a job for 6-7 months? Tell every prospective employer you're happy to start now, but in a few weeks you'll be out on prolonged leave?
The only possible thing that they can do with that information is discriminate.
[+] [-] ryguytilidie|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ckpwong|14 years ago|reply
Extended paid vacation is a different story -- employers are not obligated to approve your vacation request. Also, many companies have policies on how (paid) vacation days are incurred, especially during the first year. Having said that, most people I know would disclose any previously planned extended travel plans with the potential employer, both out of courtesy to the employer and as a condition of accepting the job.
[+] [-] officemonkey|14 years ago|reply
If the employee earns the leave, he/she should be able to take it anytime they want.
[+] [-] bconway|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|14 years ago|reply
The Nixon resignation letter was a nice touch. Perhaps the most interesting of times arises when firmly entrenched control structures are threatened. The Facebook login fiasco, and it is a fiasco, is one such example.
[+] [-] johngalt|14 years ago|reply
Fundamentally your best defense against discrimination is being too good to ignore.
[+] [-] mikeash|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oskarth|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] postfuturist|14 years ago|reply