Informal spying on potential employees is understood to happen on a regular basis. I don’t want to name any names, but temp agencies have been known to advise candidates to take care as to what information appears on their Facebook pages, Friends Reunited accounts, blogs or other potential sources of information. Employers scrutinise these sites when reviewing candidates details to see if they are about to hand a contract over to a weirdo or some sort of inflexible, awkward miserabilist. Your blog can get you fired, remember. If you are going to have a Bebo or Hi5 page that is accessible to the public, then the best bet is apparently to project the image of a smiley, outgoing, success-driven, active, sporting, party-hard, go-getting sort of narcissistic dimwit: a miniature celebrity, with friends apparently growing out of every crevice. Employers love that shit.
The use of Facebook and Myspace to get a picture of a potential employee is fair enough, really. If the information is out there in the public domain, then it isn’t a problem. It’s called research, just like someone researches a company before applying for a job or accepting one.
But to be buying information… These companies must’ve know what they were doing was wrong.
Balfour Beatty, Amec, Wimpy, Skanska. They are big companies with big personell and legal departments that exist, in part, to make sure they don’t get caught by the law. Can you seriously believe that they didn’t know what they were doing was wrong?
Remember kids, capitialism, is not your friend.
My blog has always got me in trouble and if, perchance, one day I get famous, it will no doubt be used against me but, if they day comes I know that i stand by every damn thing I’ve written.