To those who like to make personal websites

[gigapet]

Originally posted by: mugs

Originally posted by: gigapet

Originally posted by: mugs

Originally posted by: krmarks
I agree with you, but I do wonder the legality of it. I personally do not find it ethical to go the route of google and facebook. I would rather let it all come out in the interview and resume/cover letter.

You can find out a lot more about a person with google than they'd be willing to tell you themselves. That's the point.

There is no expectation of privacy when you post stuff about yourself on the Internet.

But where does the expectation come from that the info on the google results page is at all accurate? Transcripts, work experience, credit reports are all from sources that can be validated and checked for accuracy. Google results do not carry such guarantee on the quality of information they contain. So really you are running a high risk of disqualifying high quality canidates based on low quality information. edit: That practice just seems like a sloppy, innapproriate and unprofessional method of evaluation.

It seems like Kranky is at least putting some effort into verifying that he has the right person. Like the last one - the guy's experience matched up, he just fudged with the job title.

He's Assuming the website is error free. Perhaps the title on the website was inaccurate not the resume.

 

[BlueFlamme]

Originally posted by: krmarks
Interesting legal article

Obtain the applicant's written consent before conducting any detailed background investigation.

edited for quote

If I were looking for legal advice, I don't think i'd get it from a blog. Maybe for an idea of where to look, but not as a final word before I acted.

 

[krmarks]

Originally posted by: BlueFlamme

Originally posted by: krmarks
Interesting legal article

Obtain the applicant's written consent before conducting any detailed background investigation.

edited for quote

If I were looking for legal advice, I don't think i'd get it from a blog. Maybe for an idea of where to look, but not as a final word before I acted.

Seeing as it is a lawfirm's blog, I tend to believe it. If it were joe dumass' blog I would agree with you.

 

[kranky]

There are far, far more qualified candidates than there are openings. These are entry-level positions. I have to do everything legal and ethical to cut down the number of candidates. If all I could rely on is resumes and interviews, it would come down to pulling names out of a hat. When there are 100 candidates for six positions, there is no chance I'm going to interview all 100 people. I'm not doing anything illegal, I assure you.

Could the pages I found be inaccurate? Sure, that's possible. But I'll tell you something - ten years ago, you could assume 90% of what people say in interviews was truthful. Now it's like 50%. People lie and think nothing of it. All they care about is getting caught. I'm big on honesty and ethical behavior. If you're going to lie to me in an interview, or on your resume, and you know your cousin in HR at your previous job is going to lie for you about the job you held there, don't blame me for wanting to find out as much as I can on my own.

If people want to make crap up for their website, that's certainly their privilege. But do I need to assume anything there which puts them in an unfavorable light should be ignored because it might be made up? If I do that, shouldn't I also ignore anything favorable they tell me in person, for the same reason?

These people don't have ten years of work experience. They are basically carbon copies - good grades, a smattering of work experience which may or may not be related to the job, and they want the job. I can't interview them all. So I'm going to use the research tools at my disposal, and as long as I'm satisfied what I find was authored by the candidate in question, then it's going to be part of the mix.

For the people who feel I'm in the wrong, does that answer your concerns?

 

[imported_LoKe]

Originally posted by: HN

Originally posted by: LoKe
Glad my website is dedicated to technical support.

don't you have an interview today?

*starts researching LoKe's 5583 posts*

Tomorrow morning.

 

[Jzero]

Originally posted by: krmarks
It's not the privacy that I am hung up on. That part I fully agree with. Stupid is as stupid does, but it is the ethics of hiring based on something other than skill set/interview skills.

Personality and fit in the corporate culture is often as important as skills. I've seen plenty of perfectly qualfied people flounder where I work just because they don't fit in with the corporate culture. Hiring on skills alone is a recipe for disaster.

 

[Need4Speed]

Originally posted by: kranky
There are far, far more qualified candidates than there are openings. These are entry-level positions. I have to do everything legal and ethical to cut down the number of candidates. If all I could rely on is resumes and interviews, it would come down to pulling names out of a hat. When there are 100 candidates for six positions, there is no chance I'm going to interview all 100 people. I'm not doing anything illegal, I assure you.

Could the pages I found be inaccurate? Sure, that's possible. But I'll tell you something - ten years ago, you could assume 90% of what people say in interviews was truthful. Now it's like 50%. People lie and think nothing of it. All they care about is getting caught. I'm big on honesty and ethical behavior. If you're going to lie to me in an interview, or on your resume, and you know your cousin in HR at your previous job is going to lie for you about the job you held there, don't blame me for wanting to find out as much as I can on my own.

If people want to make crap up for their website, that's certainly their privilege. But do I need to assume anything there which puts them in an unfavorable light should be ignored because it might be made up? If I do that, shouldn't I also ignore anything favorable they tell me in person, for the same reason?

These people don't have ten years of work experience. They are basically carbon copies - good grades, a smattering of work experience which may or may not be related to the job, and they want the job. I can't interview them all. So I'm going to use the research tools at my disposal, and as long as I'm satisfied what I find was authored by the candidate in question, then it's going to be part of the mix.

For the people who feel I'm in the wrong, does that answer your concerns?

:thumbsup:

i took all my drunk ass pix off my website when i turned 30...just in case my boss wanted to google for me

 

[krmarks]

Just make sure you document why a person is not be hired. If they sue, which is most likely not going to happen, and you do not have it documented they will win. I agree you need to research and trim down the amount you of resumes you look at, but I am just pointing out that you may get in hot water if someone decided to challenge your methods. You are probably get the results that you or any good employer are after though.

 

[gigapet]

Originally posted by: kranky
There are far, far more qualified candidates than there are openings. These are entry-level positions. I have to do everything legal and ethical to cut down the number of candidates. If all I could rely on is resumes and interviews, it would come down to pulling names out of a hat. When there are 100 candidates for six positions, there is no chance I'm going to interview all 100 people. I'm not doing anything illegal, I assure you.

Could the pages I found be inaccurate? Sure, that's possible. But I'll tell you something - ten years ago, you could assume 90% of what people say in interviews was truthful. Now it's like 50%. People lie and think nothing of it. All they care about is getting caught. I'm big on honesty and ethical behavior. If you're going to lie to me in an interview, or on your resume, and you know your cousin in HR at your previous job is going to lie for you about the job you held there, don't blame me for wanting to find out as much as I can on my own.

If people want to make crap up for their website, that's certainly their privilege. But do I need to assume anything there which puts them in an unfavorable light should be ignored because it might be made up? If I do that, shouldn't I also ignore anything favorable they tell me in person, for the same reason?

These people don't have ten years of work experience. They are basically carbon copies - good grades, a smattering of work experience which may or may not be related to the job, and they want the job. I can't interview them all. So I'm going to use the research tools at my disposal, and as long as I'm satisfied what I find was authored by the candidate in question, then it's going to be part of the mix.

For the people who feel I'm in the wrong, does that answer your concerns?

couldn't you put more weigh ton extra curricular activities, leadership experience, community service, or simply they difficulty of the program the graduated from. Certainly you cant weight a 3.5 at harvard the same as a 3.5 at FSU

 

[krmarks]

Originally posted by: Jzero

Originally posted by: krmarks
It's not the privacy that I am hung up on. That part I fully agree with. Stupid is as stupid does, but it is the ethics of hiring based on something other than skill set/interview skills.

Personality and fit in the corporate culture is often as important as skills. I've seen plenty of perfectly qualfied people flounder where I work just because they don't fit in with the corporate culture. Hiring on skills alone is a recipe for disaster.

I agree, that is where it needs to come out in an interview.

 

[Jzero]

Originally posted by: krmarks
I agree, that is where it needs to come out in an interview.

Only so much you can learn about someone in an interview.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: Jzero

Originally posted by: krmarks
I agree, that is where it needs to come out in an interview.

Only so much you can learn about someone in an interview.

And people LIE! Not little white lies, complete and total fabrications of the truth! We had two recent employees who were major problems because their lies were not discovered until after they were hired.

 

[kranky]

Originally posted by: krmarks
Just make sure you document why a person is not be hired. If they sue, which is most likely not going to happen, and you do not have it documented they will win. I agree you need to research and trim down the amount you of resumes you look at, but I am just pointing out that you may get in hot water if someone decided to challenge your methods. You are probably get the results that you or any good employer are after though.

Those are good points, indeed. Documentation rules. I already was sued, I won. The candidate felt there was age discrimination when in reality the candidate was a borderline nutcase. What won the case was this exchange from the interview...

kranky: Do you prefer working in a team environment, or on your own?
Candidate: I prefer working on my own and as part of a team, if the team can give me assignments to do on my own as part of the group.

Originally posted by: gigapet
couldn't you put more weigh ton extra curricular activities, leadership experience, community service, or simply they difficulty of the program the graduated from. Certainly you cant weight a 3.5 at harvard the same as a 3.5 at FSU

Absolutely all that stuff counts. Anything to help differentiate. But it's not as simple as adding stuff up like a plus/minus thing. If someone was putting themselves through school while holding down a full-time job, I don't knock them for having a lot fewer outside activities - in fact, I'm more likely to put that person on the must-interview list, because it takes a heck of a lot of effort and dedication to pull that off. But to be honest, I don't give a whole lot of weight to what school it was. I look at schools in three categories - good, average, and marginal. I've found that a lot of the very "elite" schools are hard to get into, but once you're in, it's not all that tough. 80% of Harvard grads graduate with honors!

 

[skyking]

This is a nice heads-up for all you potential employees. Craft a personal website showing good hobbies and interests, and do some networking and cross-linking to get it showing up in google.

 

[ultimatebob]

Heh, I learned this the hard way all the way back in 1997. I had a personal web site where I bitched about how much my after school job at the local grocery store sucked, foolishly listing the store by name. My site must have been pretty popular, because MY site ended up being the top search result when you put the store name into AltaVista or MetaCrawler :Q

That led to an... umm.. interesting meeting with my boss about a month or two after I put in that site update, where he "asked" me to kindly remove that posting from my web site. Management was fairly nice about it, actually, but I'm sure that they would have come up with a creative excuse to fire me if I didn't edit that post out. I don't think that they could have legally canned me just for speaking my mind, but they probably would have fired me if I clocked into work five minutes late one day.

Ever since then, I never use my full name on web sites anymore, and the only place where I admit to where I work is on my resume.

 

[TallBill]

I dont think that you're in the wrong at all. Hell, you could decide that you dont like the letter "E", and anyone with the letter E in their name gets tossed out, and theres nothing that anyone could do about it.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: ultimatebob
Heh, I learned this the hard way all the way back in 1997. I had a personal web site where I bitched about how much my after school job at the local grocery store sucked, foolishly listing the store by name. My site must have been pretty popular, because MY site ended up being the top search result when you put the store name into AltaVista or MetaCrawler :Q

That led to an... umm.. interesting meeting with my boss about a month or two after I put in that site update, where he "asked" me to kindly remove that posting from my web site. Management was fairly nice about it, actually, but I'm sure that they would have come up with a creative excuse to fire me if I didn't edit that post out. I don't think that they could have legally canned me just for speaking my mind, but they probably would have fired me if I clocked into work five minutes late one day.

Ever since then, I never use my full name on web sites anymore, and the only place where I admit to where I work is on my resume.

I think they could have fired you for that.

 

[isasir]

Originally posted by: notfred
No one's found anything incriminating about me in three pages of this thread. I must be safe

I skimmed the Google results. Most of the stuff looked technical (aka too boring-looking to click on), so I moved on.

 

[TallBill]

The only other Tallbill out there is a computer professional. He makes me look good.

 

[ultimatebob]

Originally posted by: TallBill
The only other Tallbill out there is a computer professional. He makes me look good.

Heh, yeah. There is another guy with my name who has a Masters from MIT. He makes me look BAD in comparsion

 

[thirtythree]

Originally posted by: krmarks
Just make sure you document why a person is not be hired. If they sue, which is most likely not going to happen, and you do not have it documented they will win. I agree you need to research and trim down the amount you of resumes you look at, but I am just pointing out that you may get in hot water if someone decided to challenge your methods. You are probably get the results that you or any good employer are after though.

It's all documented here in cyberspace, silly.