Survey shows 70% of hiring managers reject applicants due to online profiles

Posted by: Gareth Jenkins, Head of Development 28 Jan 10 - 11:29PM  | Recruitment
A recent survey undertaken by Microsoft for the upcoming Data Privacy Day shows that 70% of hiring managers in the US have rejected applicants based on information found in their online profiles.  In the UK we seem to rely slightly less on online searches, with 41% of hiring managers here stating the same.

It does acutely highlight the need for job hunters and everyone in general to be aware of just what information is out there and publicly available online about them.  For an awful lot of people, the number of inappropriate photos, comments and other info that a potential employer really should not see that is lying around on social media sites is already large and growing fast.  Crucially an awful lot of people do not take the time to ensure that their privacy settings are quite at the level they should be, relying instead on "default values" which often leave their information wide open.

Information about an individual can be found in many ways these days, not necessarily just through Google searches on their name.  Email addresses in CVs, or given in online profiles can be searched on, often revealing such things as forum or blog comments from years past (a strong reason to always keep a separate email account for professional purposes).  In theory in a few years' time, we will even have the ability to search for photo matches from a given picture of a face - Apple's photo library software already has a reasonable implementation of this for example.

Cacheing websites, aggregator systems, website mirrors and even sites taking "historical snapshots" of the web can mean that comments made on a forum a year ago start to appear in many places, very often locations where you will not be able to remove the data easily.

A very good recent example of how online data can be used against you is the case of Rod Liddle- columnist for The Times and Spectator among other things.  For a while now he's been touted as the next possible Editor of the Independent.  However comments of a controversial nature that he'd made under a nickname on a Millwall Football Club website forum were picked up by parts of the media and have at very least counted heavily against him getting the job now.  Forum posts by other users linking his actual name to the nickname were around and easily findable from quick searches so overall, finding these comments was not all that difficult.

Of course there's probably a limit to how far a potential employer is likely to go in tracking down information on their applicants, but at the very least it is worth being aware of what information comes back within the first few pages of Google results on your name, email address and possibly your online nickname (if you think it would be easy enough for someone to find out what this is).

If you're reading this as a recruitment consultant, it may be worth talking to that top candidate you are hoping to place, with a quick recommendation to do a brief check on themselves.  That way you can ensure that they don't become part of that 40% (or 70%!) that get put onto the rejected pile.

Read the full survey and find out more about the Data Privacy Day.
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Within the next 18 months there will be commercial products which will connect all online profiles of an individual, and assimilate them into a "CV accompaniment". For years now there has been software used by universities, which compared students work with known texts, to identify plagiarism. The same technology is used to identify criminals and potential terrorists who use online pseudonyms. By connecting the writing style, ip address and location, and patterns of usage behaviour, it's possible to connect a secret username with a named individual. As almost all of the internet since 1997 has been logged, you could be accountable for every keystroke you ever made. Rod Liddle is only the tip of the iceberg.
Posted by: Stephen O'Donnell, Date 29 January 2010, 12:14AM
Thanks for your comment Stephen. Agreed about the upcoming technologies in this sphere, although I know that the University software does often throw up false positives. Whether or not hiring managers themselves use software such as this, there are an ever growing number of companies specialising in verifying candidate CVs and checking out their histories. At the very least, the tools and resources available to companies such as these are going to grow exponentially in coming years.
Posted by: Gareth Jenkins, Date 02 February 2010, 10:40AM

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