In 2008, I was honored to be at the Univ of Chicago Booth School Distinguished Alumni Media Panel. One question from the mostly soon-to-be-MBA-grad audience was about how to stop Facebook posts from preventing you from being hired. How can Facebook be a personal sharing service if personal history becomes available to everyone?
There was a long discussion about the usual advice to not post embarrassing and controversial content, not making your profile public, etc. Several panelists admitted looking at Facebook before making a hiring decision to confirm the advice to keep your Facebook clean.
I had listened without participating because the conversation seemed weird. At the time I worked at HP and HP had an extremely good HR department with a clearly conservative view on such matters. And all of us at HP had been taught well to select workers objectively, based on the candidates' ability to perform the job regardless of all non-work related characteristics (it has been awhile, so I don't recall exactly the right language.)
Getting back to the panel, it seemed like a weird discussion because all Facebook content is personal, not related to ones abilities to perform the job and so it shouldn't matter what content you post. One should never be rejected for a job because of Facebook.
Finally, I injected this point of view into the discussion. I remember predicting there will be an entire new legal expertise about the 'Facebook' separation once the first lawsuit is won by a rejected candidate. Of course, difficult to prove, but not that difficult. The discussion switched to a discussion of, even if Paul's perspective is true, can you take the risk? After a few rebuttals, the discussion wound down and the session closed.
Since that Panel, I have tracked the public discourse for any hints that the Facebook separation had been probed and defined legally. Until now, I haven't seen much about the topic (admittedly not looking that hard). I guess Facebook has become such a normal part of life that everyone knows the rules of engagement (and how to untag and delete questionable content). Moreover, all these years later, Facebook has become mostly a 'highlight reel' of our lives, not a journal of the good, the bad and the ugly.
The Fast Company article below makes clear that Facebook is mostly off limits with potentially high legal consequences. The article is located here:
http://www.fastcompany.com/1843142/what-you-should-know-about-screening-your-potential-hires
For me, there finally is closure to the advice I gave many years ago. To all those students-who-are-now-successful-employees, I hope Facebook can be fun again for you. My only question is, what took so long?
