Anonymous
09/17/2025 01:11
Subject: Yuk. My younger co worker insists on social media stalking all of our candidates even though I advise her not to
OP, you are correct. A lot of HRs counsel people not to google candidates. This helps prevents against accusations of discrimination.
Tell the coworker you don't think it's a good idea to do this for dinscrimation reasons and tell her you don't want to hear anything she finds.
Tell the coworker you don't think it's a good idea to do this for dinscrimation reasons and tell her you don't want to hear anything she finds.
Anonymous
09/17/2025 00:16
Subject: Yuk. My younger co worker insists on social media stalking all of our candidates even though I advise her not to
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:We routinely Google our candidates. Do I care about their personal lives? Not at all. But I need to know they have the common sense and judgment to control their online presence. For example, we work with government customers; I would be very wary of a candidates with a ton of visible and inflammatory political opinions (regardless what side they are on). Especially since a customer could easily find it and attribute it to my company and our brand.
Yeah, pregnancy is a non-issue but this is relevant.
you dont think its an issue in that the employee will go on leave shortly after being hired and maybe never come back?
Anonymous
09/16/2025 23:58
Subject: Yuk. My younger co worker insists on social media stalking all of our candidates even though I advise her not to
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Eh, I'm in my early 30s and I do this, mostly out of curiosity.
What aspects of future employees life are particularly interesting/importnat for you? What type of info are you trying to find? Does it influence your hiring decision?
Genuinely like 60% of my reasoning is I'm nosy. That's it. Just curious who they are.
The other 40% is wanting to sus them out. As a PP said, I want to make sure they have the good sense to not post messy personal drama, insane political opinions (of either side - for example, right now if I googled a candidate and they had tweeted like "I sure am happy Charlie Kirk died!"...ehhhh we wouldn't be moving forward with that one), etc.
Anonymous
09/16/2025 23:07
Subject: Yuk. My younger co worker insists on social media stalking all of our candidates even though I advise her not to
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:We routinely Google our candidates. Do I care about their personal lives? Not at all. But I need to know they have the common sense and judgment to control their online presence. For example, we work with government customers; I would be very wary of a candidates with a ton of visible and inflammatory political opinions (regardless what side they are on). Especially since a customer could easily find it and attribute it to my company and our brand.
If the role is public facing and your employee's persona can hurt the business then it's likely going to be a part of hiring process. But for a LOT of jobs it's completely irrelevant what an employee is doing after work, and employers or hiring managers being so invasive should be seen as a flaw in our workplace labor practices.
I am certain that there will be some major law changes going forward and it may become illegal for the employers of non-public facing employees to discriminate. You cannot demand every accountant, IT person, lunch cafeteria worker or a janitor to create online presence and spill out their personal lives for you to browse, and you cannot discriminate against them based on their political or religious beliefs or family status or sexual lives, etc. If we allow this to happen this means that employer OWNS you and you are nothing but a slave because they get to control your ENTIRE LIFE outside of working hours.
The pendulum will swing back and it won't be pretty.
This was my post. To be clear, we see it as a good thing when someone has little to no public online presence. My own social media accounts are all private. I don’t care what people are doing outside of work (as I said).
Anonymous
09/16/2025 22:03
Subject: Yuk. My younger co worker insists on social media stalking all of our candidates even though I advise her not to
Anonymous wrote:
Adults need to understand that their publicly available data WILL be found by nosy people. And employers WILL be nosy, so they can find the best fit candidate.
I'm not on social media, and I was told by my friend's husband that he would never hire someone without a social media presence. What a little jerk. I suppose I'm lucky to be able to live my life as I want, and not be forced to present a fake online persona just for someone's gratification and hiring needs!
Let me understand this and how we, as society move forward with this. It's not good to have easily identifiable online presence because anything you say or post under your personal name and with your photo can be used against you for any reason (including hiring). But it's also not good to NOT have an online presence or have not enough online presence for your employer to not find you? Do you really owe your employer a part of your personal life outside of work? Doesn't this mean that employers will then essentially own your "persona" or you have to pretend and artificially create this "persona" you think potential employers are going to like and maintain it? I think we are stumbling into the ethics territory here and it violates some labor laws for sure. IDK, I would prefer sci-fi shows like "Severance" to continue being fiction.
Anonymous
09/16/2025 21:49
Subject: Yuk. My younger co worker insists on social media stalking all of our candidates even though I advise her not to
Anonymous wrote:Eh, I'm in my early 30s and I do this, mostly out of curiosity.
What aspects of future employees life are particularly interesting/importnat for you? What type of info are you trying to find? Does it influence your hiring decision?
Anonymous
09/16/2025 21:46
Subject: Yuk. My younger co worker insists on social media stalking all of our candidates even though I advise her not to
Anonymous wrote:We routinely Google our candidates. Do I care about their personal lives? Not at all. But I need to know they have the common sense and judgment to control their online presence. For example, we work with government customers; I would be very wary of a candidates with a ton of visible and inflammatory political opinions (regardless what side they are on). Especially since a customer could easily find it and attribute it to my company and our brand.
If the role is public facing and your employee's persona can hurt the business then it's likely going to be a part of hiring process. But for a LOT of jobs it's completely irrelevant what an employee is doing after work, and employers or hiring managers being so invasive should be seen as a flaw in our workplace labor practices.
I am certain that there will be some major law changes going forward and it may become illegal for the employers of non-public facing employees to discriminate. You cannot demand every accountant, IT person, lunch cafeteria worker or a janitor to create online presence and spill out their personal lives for you to browse, and you cannot discriminate against them based on their political or religious beliefs or family status or sexual lives, etc. If we allow this to happen this means that employer OWNS you and you are nothing but a slave because they get to control your ENTIRE LIFE outside of working hours.
The pendulum will swing back and it won't be pretty.
Anonymous
09/16/2025 20:07
Subject: Yuk. My younger co worker insists on social media stalking all of our candidates even though I advise her not to
Eh, I'm in my early 30s and I do this, mostly out of curiosity.
Anonymous
09/16/2025 18:09
Subject: Yuk. My younger co worker insists on social media stalking all of our candidates even though I advise her not to
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:How do you even know it’s the right person?
This.
People think my name is "unique" because they hang around people similar to them and aren't aware of other cultures besides their own.
But if you search my first and last name, other people who are not me will show up. Luckily, the other people with my name aren't doing anything crazy lol but I'm hoping potential employers are not assuming they are me.
Yep. My maiden name was somewhat unique, but there was another woman with it in the same area I lived in way, way back when. I had someone find me through the white pages (it was a really long time ago!) saying that they had been referred to me for babysitting because I was really good with my own children. I was a single twenty-something without kids at the time! It was just a case of mistaken identity.
It got really weird when she died somewhat tragically a few years later, but that’s a story for another time.
I wouldn’t trust a rando baby registry as part of a hiring process inquiry.
Anonymous
09/16/2025 18:06
Subject: Yuk. My younger co worker insists on social media stalking all of our candidates even though I advise her not to
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:We routinely Google our candidates. Do I care about their personal lives? Not at all. But I need to know they have the common sense and judgment to control their online presence. For example, we work with government customers; I would be very wary of a candidates with a ton of visible and inflammatory political opinions (regardless what side they are on). Especially since a customer could easily find it and attribute it to my company and our brand.
Yeah, pregnancy is a non-issue but this is relevant.
+1. This is your first clue as to if they have any common sense.
Anonymous
09/16/2025 17:58
Subject: Yuk. My younger co worker insists on social media stalking all of our candidates even though I advise her not to
Anonymous wrote:We don’t have public facing roles and I personally find it invasive and for no good reason. I know it’s public blah blah blah, but I just don’t see that any good comes of it. Our standard background check will bring up anything substantive we need to know. The rest ends up just being idle gossip.
And this time I was correct.. we found a candidate is pregnant. My co worker found her registry online. I really wish I hadn’t known
you'll thank her later but you can't document this information as a reason not to hire
Anonymous
09/16/2025 16:40
Subject: Yuk. My younger co worker insists on social media stalking all of our candidates even though I advise her not to
Anonymous wrote:How do you even know it’s the right person?
This.
People think my name is "unique" because they hang around people similar to them and aren't aware of other cultures besides their own.
But if you search my first and last name, other people who are not me will show up. Luckily, the other people with my name aren't doing anything crazy lol but I'm hoping potential employers are not assuming they are me.
Anonymous
09/16/2025 16:17
Subject: Yuk. My younger co worker insists on social media stalking all of our candidates even though I advise her not to
Anonymous wrote:We routinely Google our candidates. Do I care about their personal lives? Not at all. But I need to know they have the common sense and judgment to control their online presence. For example, we work with government customers; I would be very wary of a candidates with a ton of visible and inflammatory political opinions (regardless what side they are on). Especially since a customer could easily find it and attribute it to my company and our brand.
Yeah, pregnancy is a non-issue but this is relevant.
Anonymous
09/16/2025 16:13
Subject: Yuk. My younger co worker insists on social media stalking all of our candidates even though I advise her not to
Or is it fair on other hand to hire her depending on company. My old company a start up had no maternity leave policy. And ineligible FMLA if under one year. We hired a women who was about to have a kid for remote job and she found it one big headache and wished she stayed old company till after kid born. We did her no favor.
Anonymous
09/16/2025 16:11
Subject: Yuk. My younger co worker insists on social media stalking all of our candidates even though I advise her not to
I had a guy who killed all his co-workers, bankrupted his prior company, had a messy divorce and wife stole only child and took back to her home country. I found this out on-line and talking to people he knew I used to work with.
I liked him a lot, I still keep in touch with him. But I had a tiny department in a very conserative company. I know if I hired him my boss would find out or it would come out in background check. In my case a bankrupty automatically he would not be hired. Plus he had people he killed sue him that caused bankrupty. Also reason wife left him.
He would have failed background check but many he and the guy who was litterally a terrioset my oh my.
I liked him a lot, I still keep in touch with him. But I had a tiny department in a very conserative company. I know if I hired him my boss would find out or it would come out in background check. In my case a bankrupty automatically he would not be hired. Plus he had people he killed sue him that caused bankrupty. Also reason wife left him.
He would have failed background check but many he and the guy who was litterally a terrioset my oh my.