Connections - October 2009 - 13

t’s expensive to bring new hires on board. Some estimate that it’s as high as $32,226 to replenish employee turnover. It’s smart business to do all you can to weed out poor potential hires right off the bat, and that’s where social media comes into play. Social media offers a free, online opportunity to learn a great deal about a potential hire from status updates and photos, to information about their family and friends. i Despite the copious amount of information you can learn about someone online, can you get in trouble for inspecting social media profiles such as Myspace, Facebook and Twitter before bringing potential hires on board? What if you see someone posing in his or her skivvies, learn the person is in a protected class, or see status updates and find something you might consider questionable behavior? Can inspecting the profiles come back to haunt you and your business? Fifteen-year Attorney Kim Smith of Hartman Underhill & Brubaker LLP Michael , Biggerstaff, CEO of Nxtbook Media, and Julie Sullivan, co-founder, managing partner, and senior search consultant at GRN of Fox Valley, weigh in on the issue. “Most employers would not make a decision solely on a Facebook entry. They’d have an application process and request certain information in conjunction with the application. There might be references, employment history, conduct interviews, and there would be many other legitimate reasons why the person might not get hired if an employer saw something they didn’t like,” said Smith. “It’s not likely that a company could get in trouble for this.” However, there are a few hiring-in-anage-of-social-media circumstances that could land an employer in hot water. One such instance would be if they made the adverse decision and refused to hire someone based on the fact they were in a protected class. “Let’s say an employer gets on Facebook and sees someone who has a disability or is in another protected class, like someone who is over the age of 40 and this is the sole reason why someone didn’t get hired. Certainly the employer could have some exposure,” said Smith. As of now, Smith doesn’t know of any legal cases pending regarding social media and the hiring process because she said most employers are savvy in this day and age. “Employers are careful and cautious.

Connections - October 2009

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Connections - October 2009