Sun 28 Jun 2009
A friend of mine lives in Bozeman, MT. He pointed me to an article that talked about the City of Bozemen requiring job applicants to submit their usernames and passwords for social media sites they are on. You read right. Passwords, too.
When I first heard about this, I had a rather negative emotional reaction to it. I was ready to write about it, but decided to wait and take a step back first. Writing when you’re in the heat of battle is never a good thing.
After a few days, I started thinking why this bothered me so much. Social media is definitely becoming a research vehicle for potential employers. As it should be. How you display yourself out to the public can reflect on the company you work for, good or bad. But there is a distinction between what is available to the entire world vs. what is available to a few friends.
Asking for a password to an account–any account–is akin to asking for the key to your house so they can walk around in it. There is an expectation of privacy behind a password. Allowing access behind that password gives access to parts of your life that a stranger–someone you may never see again–should never see.
Sites like MySpace and Twitter are, by nature, public. What you post there can be seen by the whole world. And as a member of those sites, you need to be cognizant of that at all times. It gets even more so if you are using a screen name that relates to your company like I do on Twitter. You are essentially representing your company whether your tweets are about the company or not.
Sites like Facebook, on the other hand, have privacy controls that let you show what you want to who you want. If you keep your profile restricted from the general public, there is no reason a potential employer needs to see what’s there, because no one but who you give access to will.
Granted, some people are using Facebook like Twitter to gather as many friends as possible. In that case, the Twitter rule applies. But most people have a smattering of in-real-life friends that they befriend on Facebook. Presumably, these people know you. And if you’re going to post pictures of yourself acting like a complete moron, your friends will know it’s you being a moron and not a moron that works for a particular company (not that you should be posting those pictures anyway).
A potential employer asking for a password to a social site is really no different than asking for the password to your email (or the key to your house). They’ll tell you it’s different, but it’s not. Password protected information is, by nature, private. They wouldn’t require a password if it wasn’t.
If an interviewer asks you for that information, I suggest you politely refuse. If they said it’s a requirement for the job, I suggest you politely decline the job. There are other jobs out there (even in today’s economy). If they are going to watch you that closely before you even start working there, imagine how closely they’ll watch you when you are working there.
