Acumen News & Events

11 May 2010

A social profile too far?

How far can employers delve into an applicant’s online presence without going too far?

With the boom in use of online social profiles such as Facebook, Bebo and Linkedin, it was only a matter of time before curiosity got the cat and employers took the bold step onto the internet super highway to review the profiles of prospective candidates for employment. But how far can employers delve into an applicant’s online presence without going too far?

Employers often fail to realise that even before an individual is employed, they have rights.  Applicants for employment have rights, specifically the right not to be discriminated against on grounds of sex, race, disability, religion, belief or age. This creates a potential minefield for employers before employment has even begun!

A employer can best protect itself by making the recruitment process as clinical and scientific in its nature as possible. Recruitment has slowly moved this way over recent years, with the recruitment process becoming far more standardised than ever before. The use of set criteria to asses candidates  gives the employer a clear ground to demonstrate the business reasons behind any employment or rejection of applicants, and to demonstrate to a Tribunal where needs be that the application process was not tainted by discriminatory reasons in any way.

Should the review of online profiles be part of the selection criteria?
By including social profiles within the selection criteria it may be harder for an employer to demonstrate to a Tribunal that any rejection of employment was based on scientific and objective criteria, and not tainted by discrimination on the basis of the facets of the online profile.

Consider the case study below.

Employee X (25yrs) applies for a vacancy at Company A but is rejected from an application process  following a review of their online profile by the employer. Employee Y (40yrs) applies for the same vacancy but does not have an online profile and so the employer does not use this as a consideration in the selection process. On the basis of the treatment of Employee X, Company A could not face a potential claim from employee X for unfair treatment. As a broad generalisation it is generally the case that younger people sign up to online profiles. By considering the online profile of Employee X who is younger, especially where Employee Y has no such profile to review , Company A is clearly treating the younger Employee X at a disadvantage.

Our advice... don’t use social profiles in recruitment.

The risks of claims against the employer are too great  in view of the potential claims for discrimination that could arise should an employer happen to reject an application on the basis of online profiling.  Employers should consider themselves warned against using social profiles in the recruitment process.