Employer Discrimination with Social Media

Employers Use Social Media to Illegally Discriminate against Job Seekers

Discrimination during the job interview stage of the hiring process is very old fashioned. Instead, 21^st century employers discriminate much earlier. Rather than fully reviewing professional documents that have been submitted, modern employers simply go online and review applicants’ personal information.

At least, that is what a Carnegie Mellon University study recently found. The study involves the typical dummy resumes and the not-so typical-dummy social media profiles on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Applications were sent to technical, managerial, and analyst positions. The profiles had privacy settings consist with the average user.

The six month study in politically conservative states made a few interesting discoveries. First, Christian “applicants” received a call back 17% of the time while Muslims got called about a job interview about 2% of the time. Surprisingly, sexual orientation was not impacted, at least not at the early stages of the application process.

The study is quite significant, given that more than a third of U.S. employers claim they consult social media sites before making the final job offer. The real impact of the study, however, is that employers are not limiting their search to embarrassing photos, offensive language, or unprofessional behavior anymore. It seems employers’ Google searches of possible employees are expanding to otherwise innocent content.

Discrimination Based on Religion, Sexual Orientation, or Parenthood

Employment discrimination based on religion, sexual orientation, or parenthood is illegal in many states. Detecting such discrimination in the hiring process has always been a challenge because such discrimination can be subconscious: the employer discriminates without realizing it.

The Carnegie study reveals that this kind of discrimination might be more difficult to discover than previously suspected. Imagine if an employer looks at an applicant’s Facebook page and sees a passage from the Quran, or a sonogram, or both. Suppose that said employer does not call the applicant as a result of seeing the Quran or sonogram. It will be very difficult for a job seeker to prove that the social media post was responsible for the employer’s illegal discrimination.

So should job applicants delete their online profiles and avoid social media at all costs? That’s a bad idea for at least two reasons. First, job applicants would have to avoid social media forever, since employers occasionally check their employee’s social media. Second, in an era where everyone has a Facebook or Twitter account, the absence of an online presence might also be telling about the applicant (age discrimination, etc). So far, the best solution appears to be keeping social profiles to “Friends Only” on security settings and saying “no” if an employer asks to join your friend group.

Who Should Be Responsible?

This discussion raises an interesting question: should it be the applicant’s duty to scrub his or her online presence clean of all incriminating information, or should businesses avoid looking for every little detail about an applicant’s life?

On the other hand, the Internet is an open world. If I post thousands of words about illegal business practices online, future employers shouldn’t punish me for my views. That would violate my free speech (assuming the employer is a government entity). Given that discrimination based on religion and other classifications is illegal, the burden should be on employers to prove that they didn’t do anything wrong when they rejected an applicant after visiting the applicant’s Facebook page.