Social networks are commonly identified in online computer services that allow the creation of virtual social networks. These are websites or technologies that allow users to share textual content, images, video and audio and interact with each other.
Social networks generally provide for registration by creating a password-protected personal profile and the ability to search the database of the IT structure to locate other users and organize them into groups and contact lists. The information shared varies from service to service and may include personal, sensitive (religious beliefs, political opinions, sexual inclinations, etc.) and professional data. On social networks, users are not only users, but also content creators. The social network becomes an interactive hypertext through which to spread thoughts, ideas, links and multimedia contents.
Web 2.0, thanks to the aforementioned numerous features [support for publishing images, videos and comments, real-time messaging service (chat), geolocation (check-in) and identification of the time in which each virtual action is performed], is which has become an integral part of modern social reality and, therefore, also exposes itself to considerable interactions with the world of work, exposing employees to any remote controls; clearly the latter must first of all proceed to the creation of their personal identification profile and, necessarily, live by relating to the virtual society.
Social networks allow users of the service to get out of the anonymity of everyday life and reveal their tastes, opinions, and even their behavior in real time to the “social platform”, carving out a real role in the digital society. From this, it can easily be deduced that, being the user in possession of a digital identity, within the Social platform, and more precisely within the digital support provided by the service provider, a trace would remain of all the actions performed by the latter
Lager explains that SI does a better job than the average employer, who “shouldn’t be doing it themselves anyway. At best, he will waste a lot of time reading content that does not concern him; at worst, he will develop unfair and possibly illegal biases. Still according to her, the specialized control companies play the role of “impartial intermediary”. She admits, however, that it is up to the client to choose the categories from which they want their candidates selected. A company employing security guards, for example, might be interested in potential violence in the social media history of its candidates, but not racism or intolerance. This could create an ethical divide.
As Lager puts it, social media screening companies have a responsibility to ensure that “candidates are not rejected based on factors such as religion, political beliefs, disability, or sexual orientation.” But are all companies able to refuse ridiculous but not necessarily illegal requests from their clients, effectively excluding applicants who have done nothing wrong? “A client told me that he’s literally turned down a person in the past because they’ve been posting too many selfies and food photos,” Lager says. “The merging of public and private spaces is very problematic.
At the hiring level, recruiters are beginning to take into account the progressive delimitation of the boundaries between public and private spaces. “In general, we are mainly looking for offensive comments and we check the general tone of the publications. We also verify that candidates are not working for the competition,” says an advertising expert working in the world of influencer marketing who agreed to speak to VICE on condition of anonymity.
The solution, warns Church, is to verify yourself before applying for a job: “You should keep in mind that your social media account is likely to be verified. In other words, you need to take responsibility, revise your social media footprint, and pay attention to privacy settings. Personal messages should be limited to close friends. If there are sensitive posts, it is better to delete them. She also suggests using a pseudonym. Unfortunately, according to D’Souza, current employment law favors recruiters over employees. Thus, “candidates are unlikely to know that they have been excluded from a recruitment process because of their online profile”.
