Posted on 03/20/2012 7:18:33 AM PDT by bjorn14
When Justin Bassett interviewed for a new job, he expected the usual questions about experience and references. So he was astonished when the interviewer asked for something else: his Facebook username and password.
Bassett, a New York City statistician, had just finished answering a few character questions when the interviewer turned to her computer to search for his Facebook page. But she couldn’t see his private profile. She turned back and asked him to hand over his login information.
Bassett refused and withdrew his application, saying he didn’t want to work for a company that would seek such personal information. But as the job market steadily improves, other job candidates are confronting the same question from prospective employers, and some of them cannot afford to say no.
(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...
>> You’re old and aren’t worried about being discriminated on the basis of political beliefs. I am young and expect to be.
Well, I don’t see myself as “old” :-) but I suppose I may be a little older than you.
So if you’re worried about employment, I have an idea for you. Not just for you, but for everyone on this forum who is rankled by an employer (gasp!) actually wanting to VET them before hiring them. The noive of dese guys!
Since you are teeming with skills and abilities and motivation and good clean core principles that those nasty evil employers REFUSE to recognize based merely on your good word, bypass them!
Start your own business! Make you own way. It’s a lot of hard work and a certain amount of risk, but very rewarding, I can assure you.
Then YOU get to be the employer and make the decisions! Oh, sure, there are headaches — meeting payroll, *hiring*, investing for growth, government regulations... but those are NOTHING compared to the pain of letting an evil corporation peek at your sacred Facebook account.
Go for it!
It’s not a high horse — if I can’t trust you to protect your own assets, I sure am not going to trust you to handle mine. Even washing dishes.
kevkrom makes a really good point.
If your employee would readily hand over security information about THEMSELVES, how safe would YOUR security information be with this person?
>> It’s not a high horse
Of course it is. Your dogma is rather loopy. You’re also taking a vacuous position, as we’re in an anonymous internet forum with essentially zero possibility of being tested in the real world.
Whatever makes your socks roll up and down though. I’m happy you could use the exchange to stroke your ego; it seems you need that.
FRegards
Yes, all us pesky kids should get off his lawn. *snicker*
Even a dishwasher might be convinced to leave a door unlocked... you know, if he really needs the money.
In the corporate world, it's someone sending private company info in an emial to a buddy (or on Facebook) because they either don't realize what a breach they're making, or they simply don't care (or, they're doing it "just once" in exchange for a favor). As the business owner, the net effect is the same to me -- someone is leaking my confidential information. So to avoid that, I am not going to hire someone who has shown me that they will do so if they think the circumstances warrant.
This isn't dogma, it's not vacuous, and it's not ego-stroking -- it's basic security and common sense. Hey, if you want to hire someone who has no clue about how say to say "no" in order to keep confidential things confidential, that's your (soon to be extinct) business.
Ding, ding, ding. You've finally got it - exactly wrong.
This is the whole point of the discussion. Have you ever had a mountain lion in your living room? Well, no problem, just throw him out - IT IS THAT SIMPLE! No. the smart home owner takes steps to prevent the lion from getting into his house in the first place.
It's not much different in business. Once an individual is hired - they're IN - they have ACCESS. Wouldn't you rather know if they had a history of drunkenness, philandering, racism - or worse yet, that they voted for Barrack Obama?
Knowledge is power. And if you're the smart business owner, you protect yourself first and foremost by the accumulation - and wise use of - the knowledge of who are your employees.
Holy Crap!! My husband is a baby boomer?? And I’m a Gen-X’er?
Wow, who knew 10 years would mean so much!?! haha
Seriously, he is born in 1962, I never imagined him to be a Baby Boomer.
That just bolsters my point -- if the individual would give up confidential information about themselves to get the job, why would I trust them not to give up confidential information about the job to someone else for some reason?
Thee are lots of ways to vet someone for a job. Asking them to violate proper safeguards of information is not -- because it sets exactly the wrong precedent.
...Colorado has a law that stipulates an employer may not use activities outside of work to determine employment status.
So don't don't have the check-box on your intake application: "Is not a philandering drunk".
Therefore when I hire I want to know A-B-S-O-L-U-T-E-L-Y EVERYTHING about that candidate I can POSSIBLY know.
I never suggested that an individual should give up confidential information about themselves to get the job. And in defense of Nervous, he only mentioned that he would - if he HAD to...
Is there a problem?
FWIW - Once upon a time I knew a guy who had a VP position in a successful business. He was a large part of the success of the company. His boss was a hard-nosed business type that had enjoyed success in many of his business endeavors over the years.
For some reason the boss decided to start intruding heavily into the personal lives of his employees. And when I say heavily I mean into places where NO ONE, much less an employer should go. Within a few months time, he has utterly wrecked the working environment that had been previously ideal for all involved.
Confronted by his employees, he took the “I am King” position with men that had been with him since day one and sacrificed years of their (personal) lives into building ‘his’ business (and their own company stocks).
Eventually he went so far over the edge that his No. 1 guy said ‘enough’ and walked. The fallout of that proved to be highly damaging to the company, which was put up for sale some time after. At a significant personal loss to his Majesty.
The moral of the story, if there is really one, is that business owners have the absolute right to do what they will with their company. They can hire who and for whatever reasons they want and set whatever terms of employment they choose. Likewise, they free to make the most asinine and self destructive business decisions imaginable to feed their egos and call it a ‘good business practice.’
Personally, I can say that every person that has hired me has gotten more than they paid for. I’ve walked out of interviews and took a couple serious financial hits over my unwillingness to work for the above type bosses. Life is too short to suffer fools, even high paying fools...and most aren’t high paying to begin with.
So is it fair game to ask for a FB password? IMO, yes. It’s also a good way to have great employees never work for (the general sense) you since that type of boss obviously is not smart enough to separate the boundaries between employment and private life.
FWIW/YMMV ETC
>> the point is that anyone who will turn over this information about themselves, for any reason short of a legal court order, is not someone who would make a trustworthy employee.
Huh? This is what I mean by “your dogma is loopy”. (And it IS dogmatic and egotistical to say “I” [the great kevkrom] deem you unemployable for any reason. That’s not ad hominem; it’s a conclusion based on observed evidence.)
The key concept isn’t the damn password, it’s the information on the page. I give you the password to my account because you demand it as a condition of employment for a position I feel I must try to obtain. As soon as I’m out of your presence I change the password. So what? I don’t care how loudly you and your sycophants here twitter that this proves I can’t be trusted. That’s bunk.
Now, let’s set the scene. I am flat broke. Haven’t eaten for days. My beloved Mrs. Tick is ill, resting as best she can in our barely running car outside the restaurant because we have no home. I’m not applying for Vice President In Charge Of Dogma, I’m applying for dishwasher. The interviewer requires of me my facebook password. I wince inside, not really wanting to give it up... but I REALLY NEED THIS JOB. I’ll change the password at the library after I leave.
And you insist it’s not high-handed in such a scenario to sniff disdainfully and proclaim that I am unfit to wash dishes or hold ANY job because I answered the interviewer’s demands?
Well, I think your position is not only high-handed but also absurd — and I’m calling you out on it.
The census has Gen X as 1965 to 1976.
10 years ha spring chicken, of you hubby is just a little younger than me.
LOL
What you said on steroids in post 11
That's not bunk, that's grounds for losing a security clearance. YOU NEVER GIVE UP YOUR PASSWORD TO ANYONE, for any reason, no matter how temporary.
And as I stated upthread in my first post, if providing this password was a condition for employment, I sure don't want to work there, because the company clearly has no clue of how confidential information is to be treated.
This isn't '“I” [the great kevkrom]' (I note how you keep resorting to snide comments to try and defend your weak position, though), this is simple common sense. People who don't respect their own property aren't going to respect mine, and vice-versa. The same standard applies to both prospective employee and prospective employer. So while I've been talking about this from the perspective of the employer, it's as true for the employee -- making this type of demand as an employer means that you're unfit as an employer and submitting to the demand as an employee means that you're unfit as an employee.
You will never build a proper working relationship with someone if your first major interaction involves someone being forced into a breach of trust.
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