Maybe You’re Protected?

After discussing how Facebook’s privacy may impact your online perception, I opened up today’s news and saw that it may be illegal for bosses to spy on you using online networks.

According to the Privacy Act, recruiters must state to potential employees what data they are collecting about them; what they are doing with the data; and who else is going to see the data. This is a pretty normal process because you don’t want third parties exploiting your personal information. It also states that data can only be collected that is directly needed for the business – which is where the problems begin.

On a Facebook profile, some of the information could possibly be relevant such as job history and contact details; but most of the information wouldn’t matter… especially the number of friends you have.. right? According to one hiring manager, the number of Facebook friends you have does come into the equation – and because a receptionist had too many friends on her friends list she wasn’t hired.

But do Facebook friends really come into the equation? Some jobs need lots of Facebook friends. Think of all of those spammy promoter friends who send through events to your accounts every two seconds. They would constantly add people who have joined their guestlists once, or friends of friends to ensure that their guestlist is big – increasing the chance of hitting a payday. So does this mean those who promote are impacted in the future?

A leading workplace lawyer says that the number of friends shouldn’t come into the equation, and that one of the rights people have is to ask for the notes written throughout an interview or application to validate that the information is correct. If they refuse, then you have a right to complain to the Privacy Commissioner. However, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner stated that not one complaint has ever been lodged.

So how could you protect yourself when job hunting? Some organisations (they aren’t named in the article) are putting in their own policies about using social networks for recruitment – with all of them banning the use of ‘researching’ future employees. But this is only some organisations.

It’s all about your online perception – keeping your account private is the best way of ensuring that randoms won’t be accessing your accounts. In my personal experience, each of my social networks are for different things – My Facebook is for friends, my Twitter is my general thoughtstream, My LinkedIn is my resume and my MySpace is the embarrasing thing I made in High Schoool.