No Hire

http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/blob/master/2009-06-26/no_hire.md#readme

by raganwald • 17 years ago

230 115 17 years ago

uuilly• 17 years ago

Agreed. If anyone ever pulled that on me I'd walk out on the spot. And my FB page is utterly innocuous.

krakensden• 17 years ago

It's a nice sentiment, but I'd guess most people looking for a job right now can't afford that sort of... principled stand. Job seeking is nearly always a position of weakness.

raganwald10• 17 years ago

If you are mixing money and principles, we have different definitions of the word "principle."

To me a principle is something that is so important I am willing to make sacrifices and suffer indignities to protect it. It isn't a "nice-to-have," it's a non-negotiable. In fact, I would say that you don't know whether something is a principle or not until you are looking at having to sell your home to avoid foreclosure because you won't compromise it.

JM2C on the word...

zackattack• 17 years ago

I agree.

I also think the best point the author makes is that he'd be culturally incompatible with anyone who pulls this sort of nonsense anyway. I'm a big advocate of transparency for cooperation.

alex_c• 17 years ago

I actually agree with the grandparent comment, while reading your essay I was thinking very much the same. You - and many people on HN, I suspect - have the luxury of turning down job offers you don't like, because you know you have other options. What happens when you DON'T have options? What happens when not only your house but your ability to support your kids is on the line, you've applied to hundreds of jobs with no responses, and this is the first solid lead? What happens when you're NOT a highly competent IT professional in a position of strength?

I completely agree that the practice is wrong, but I don't think that "fine, don't hire me, I don't want to work there anyway" (with the implied "because I have choices") is the most constructive approach.

brown9-2• 17 years ago

"I have just read that companies routinely review Facebook and MySpace activity when screening prospective candidates. One allegation is that if your profile is blocked to non-friends, they may ask you to log in in front of them to let them have a look."

Is this allegation backed up by any fact? Besides that one town in Montana which got in trouble for doing this and has since stopped (I believe this was posted a few days ago).

I may be naive but I really can't imagine this practice being all that widespread - if it's not more than a myth spawned by one or two idiotic hiring managers.

Seems like a lot of passion spawned by not a whole lot of fact.

mcormier• 17 years ago

Exactly, you don't get many credibility points if you don't back up your main statement.

carbon82• 17 years ago

Googling someone and checking out their Facebook and MySpace? Yeah, it's common. I've seen surveys that put it at about 1/3 of hiring managers doing it. Is it common for them to make you log in? Probably not, but he didn't say it was.

bcl• 17 years ago

I'm not in management, but have been asked to help out reviewing candidates before. I always google them, but not to look for dirt. I'm interested in how active they are in the open source community. What kinds of projects have they helped out with, etc. I expect any company hiring me to have done the same.

But asking for or expecting access to private websites like facebook? No way. The OP looks to me like someone looking for something to rant about.

yangyang4• 17 years ago

But the "making you log in" bit is the crux of the post. That's crossing the public / private line.

ironkeith• 17 years ago

I don't think I've ever hired anyone without first Googling their name, if for no other reason than curiosity. That said, I've never not hired, or not interviewed based on something I've seen in the SERPs.

schof• 17 years ago

I have never (and would never) ask a candidate to allow me access to a private profile. However, I have rejected a candidate for what they posted on their blog.

Posting things on the public Internet that reflects poorly on the candidate shows a judgment issue that is a valid reason for rejecting a candidate.

In the case I'm thinking of, a cursory Google search on a candidate I would otherwise have hired showed that he had at least one job that he had quit without notice; this job was not listed on his resume. In addition, this first-person blog stated that he had shown up to work so hungover he could barely see, on more than one occasion.

Should I have hired this person, given the red flags I found via Google and that there were other equally-qualified candidates who did not have those red flags?

allenbrunson2• 17 years ago

There may be some good points in here, but it strikes entirely the wrong tone. This kind of in-your-face attitude is just going to harden everyone's existing positions.

rcoder• 17 years ago

I whole-heartedly disagree. It's important to take a stand against ineffective, borderline-illegal screening processes used by employers.

People who frequent HN may not be subject to this problem as much, but in general, most of the power in an interview is concentrated at the employer's side of the table, rather than the applicant's. For them to abuse that power by prying into people's personal lives is unethical and unfair.

Hiring managers should know better, but it sometimes takes push-back from the community to help them see the issues involved. The recent change in policy in Bozeman shows that such feedback can be effective.

allenbrunson2• 17 years ago

"taking a stand" is not the same thing as causing a scene. i personally stopped reading this rant after a paragraph or so, because of the author's poor attitude. i doubt i'm the only one.

gamache• 17 years ago

Where is this "one allegation" coming from? To me, this sounds like a righteous rant against something that didn't happen to the author or anyone he knew, and rarely happens at all.

icey• 17 years ago

I'm just guessing, but:

http://scitech.blogs.cnn.com/2009/06/19/want-a-job-hand-over...

dws• 17 years ago

Which the City of Bozeman has since backed off on.

rapind2• 17 years ago

What I find really unusual is this happened in Bozeman. I spent a couple weeks there an a ski/backpack trip and the culture was extremely liberal.

My take on the situation though after reading the article is just a case of understandable incompetence. They just didn't realize what a big deal it was. They were looking for a limited number of bad flags and didn't really think it through. Someone with very little social networking experience, read some nightmare accounts in some FUD article and made a really dumb decision.

jrockway4• 17 years ago

Yeah, let's wait until this is a widespread practice before we worry about it. Planning for the future is like totally non-Agile.

trickjarrett• 17 years ago

Rather than force employees or potential employees to show you their Facebook profiles, what the company SHOULD do is make it clear, at the time of hiring, what your company's rules are for social media. Have a clear, concise, no grey area, document which explains their stance on it.

Being as deeply connected in social media as I am, I feel awkward being at a job which doesn't have one of these.

jrockway4• 17 years ago

Why is this necessary? It is not your employer's business to worry about what you do when you aren't at work.

Tangurena• 17 years ago

When it becomes a public issue, such as a teacher or CEO with naughty pictures, then it reflects real badly on the organization. Facebook and other sites become a public record of you and your activities.

One case that might not have happened is the Australian worker who called in sick, then wrote on Facebook that they're still trashed:

http://www.hrblunders.com/was-facebook-sick-day-star-framed/

Swiss worker says: I can't come to work because I'm too sick to use a computer, then logs into Facebook. Result: fired.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090428/1140394681.shtml

zacharypinter• 17 years ago

All the more reason to appreciate the trend towards starting your own company.

The internet has definitely changed our views on privacy. Overall, I think this is a good thing. But it can be disturbing when you realize how much information a 10 minute search can pull up. For example, I just found out that googling my name turns up a page on whitehouse2.org where I listed several political positions. I generally try to keep anything associated with my full name fairly neutral and professional, though I hadn't even considered Google when signing up for that site.

bayareaguy• 17 years ago

As someone who screens candidates where I work, I often check if a particularly worthwhile candidate is registered on LinkedIn in part to cross check details they provide on their resume and occasionally add them as a "connection". I think this is the limit of acceptable behavior, in part because LinkedIn's focus is professional.

The only exception I can think of would be a job in which maintaining a highly public Facebook or MySpace page was itself an essential function.

mcantor• 17 years ago

I agree. It seems like LinkedIn is uniquely appropriate in terms of online searches, since it was designed with professional jobs in mind.

blhack• 17 years ago

Everyone seems to be looking at this backwards...

I thought that the prevailing view around here was that, when applying for a job, you are interviewing the company as much (and if you're talented, even more) than they are interviewing you.

To me, if an employer asked me anything about my HN, or Slashdot, or reddit, or gibsonandlily, or facebook, or myspace, or whatever other silly social network I had signed up for in the past profile, it would be a "thank you for your time, but I'm not interested" response from me.

I suspect that the type of employer that has issues with boundaries like facebook and myspace is also going to have issues with boundaries like "I am using the two weeks allowed per year of vacation to go to the lake with my family. I am not on call right now, do not get angry if I don't respond to your emails immediately".

In other words, them even asking about your profile should be a major red flag.

yangyang4• 17 years ago

If it's public, you've got to expect people to see it, including potential employers. It's ridiculous to expect anything else.

If they don't like it, they don't necessarily need to talk to you about it. You just might end up not being considered.

The signing in in front of them thing is an exception but it doesn't seem to actually happen anyway, so that's a red herring.

rapind2• 17 years ago

I agree that it's a two-way interview, and that's really the only way to look at it. Even if you really need a job, you're better off waiting to find a good fit.

However, I disagree than a potential employer looking over our online persona is necessarily a negative thing. In fact, I think it can be positive in that it suggested the hiring manager is doing some real work to check out their candidates. Just like anything there are lines you can cross, but that's just common sense.

Asking for a potential hire to login into their FB and show their world shows a complete lack of common sense in almost any context.

Checking out a potential hire's technical background for a technical position is certainly within the realm of common sense, and I think it would be negligent not to. There may be a wealth of relevant information available online about the candidate, and this shouldn't be ignored.

Likewise, I would recommend putting in the effort to check out the employer's history too. Using google, wayback machine, chief staff members, etc. It doesn't take long and give's you a much better idea about the opportunity. Most employer's would find that kind of research shows commitment to finding a good fit.

tedunangst• 17 years ago

re: The Prisoner, by banned in the US, do you mean "the network chose not to show it because their audience probably wouldn't like it"? Or banned as in actually banned?

raganwald10• 17 years ago

Somebody or somebodies chose not to show it in the US for a decade. The episode was not offered to US networks at all. The official reason given was the presence of hallucinogenic drugs, even though four or more other episodes featured drugs. I doubt it had anything to do with the audience, it was likely backroom manoevering.

The US Networks didn't "ban" it, they weren't offered it in the first place, so their hands are clean of censorship. Did they tell the producers that the episode was unacceptable? I don't know. Since they didn't receive it, it never went as far as the FCC or whomever issuing a ruling against it.

The video lined in the post gives an account using the verb "ban" and I went along with that.

po• 17 years ago

What's up with using github as a blog? Now when I see a link that says github, instead of classifying as "might be interesting code" I have to think "might be a personal rant"?

I get that its an experiment; and I think it's a moderately clever idea... I just like that github is all about the code. If this becomes popular, I think github needs to roll blogging into their site as a feature so that it can sit in a separate namespace than code projects.

sant0sk1• 17 years ago

I don't think we have to worry too much about this becoming popular, especially since GitHub pages allows for git-based blogging from your own domain.

Also, raganwald's blog is usually all about code, which is why he set it up on GitHub to begin with. This seems to be a deviation from the norm.

mhartl• 17 years ago

This story was covered a while ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=347421

dasil003• 17 years ago

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Personally, raganwald is a much better writer than me, so I look forward to the opportunity to fork his blog and claim it under my own namespace.

byrneseyeview3• 17 years ago

This is very one-sided. Hiring someone is a big investment (spending time and risking company culture, in addition to the money). Having more information is always useful.

I've looked at Facebook profiles when judging potential employees. I've never ruled anyone out because of it, but one person got a lot closer to the job when I saw that that he spent his off hours talking about what he'd spend his work hours doing.

Basically, there are three possibilities when an employer looks at your Facebook: a) they like what they see (so they have better information, and you're more likely to get a job, b) they are neutral (nobody loses), or c) they dislike it (so by denying them access, you're artificially boosting your prospects -- cheating them out of the employee they want, and cheating that employee out of a job).

It's good to be suspicious of people trolling for personal data -- but I'm much more suspicious of efforts to hide information.

scscsc4• 17 years ago

The hiring process is a negotiation between two sides. The more information you have, the better you'll do.

It's not fair for an employer to look in your private life; any more than it is fair for the potential employee to look at confidential company data. How would you like that? The company is hiding information, thereby cheating you into a job.

nostrademons2• 17 years ago

Many companies I've interviewed at have shared confidential company data with me so that I have more information to make my decision. # of shares outstanding, expected future rounds of funding, development practices, upcoming projects I might be working on.

Information in negotiations works two ways: oftentimes, it's prudent to release a bit of information as a signaling device, because it shows that you're confident the information will work in your favor.

tptacek6• 17 years ago

It stopped being "your private life" when you published it.

byrneseyeview3• 17 years ago

It's not fair for an employer to look in your private life; any more than it is fair for the potential employee to look at confidential company data.

Every time I interview for a job, I try to find out information from the company, particularly information they don't want released. Maybe I'm weird, but I get burned less because of it.

Goladus3• 17 years ago

Information you lack the context to interpret truthfully is not useful.

byrneseyeview3• 17 years ago

A Facebook page is part of the context for interpreting an interview and resume.

ghshephard• 17 years ago

So, let us assume that facebook/linkedin/twitter/livejournal postings are completely irrelevant to an individuals suitability for a job.

What about previous job experiences?

Is it acceptable for an employer to query previous employers/coworkers as to how effective they were in related jobs? Let us say you are coming into a company applying for the position of a kernel developer, and your last two positions at companies were doing the same job. Is it okay for the hiring manager to talk to your previous managers and coworkers to see how good you were at your Job, how effective a developer you were?

Or is it the case that all screening outside of A) the interview and B) the references that the candidate hands over, are off limits?

In silicon valley it's a pretty common procedure to ask for internal suggestions when a position comes up, and people think of who they've worked with over the last 10 years that might be suitable for a position - to some degree that's an "off-the-books" reference check, and I'm wondering if people feel that's an acceptable thing to do when hiring?

mechanical_fish2• 17 years ago

Is it acceptable for an employer to query previous employers/coworkers as to how effective they were in related jobs?

Of course. This is called "checking references" and is standard practice that nobody disagrees with. The key words here are "employers/coworkers" and "related jobs", which are distinct from "high school friends" and "church socials".

raganwald10• 17 years ago

A personal observation: I'm also a hiring manager, and I struggle with this problem on both sides of the table.

I Google candidates for their professional opinions and activities. But what do I do if I find their profile on a public site like HN? Some of the comments are going to be useful fodder for an interview I noticed you posted a comment on HN suggesting OOP has had its fifteen minutes of fame. What do you see replacing it? ... But I might also read opinions about politics. What if the same person has posted HN comments about Obama the Magic Negro? I really don't want to know what they think and why in the context of hiring them.

Worse, what if I see a comment from the same person saying one of my posts is absolute garbage and that I'm an idiot? Now I may have compromised my impartiality.

I don't know the answer. I wouldn't look up a candidate in something obviously personal like Facebook or MySpace, but I have no idea how to handle stuff like HN that contains what I perceive to be a mix of relevant technical opinions and personal, wrong-side-of-the-privacy-line stuff.

I don't know.

nostrademons2• 17 years ago

"Worse, what if I see a comment from the same person saying one of my posts is absolute garbage and that I'm an idiot? Now I may have compromised my impartiality."

If you're a good manager, you should be able to stomach having an employee tell you that. After all, what if your opinion is absolute garbage and you're an idiot? Do you want people working for you who won't call you out when you're wrong?

The right question to ask there is why your posts is garbage and you're an idiot. See if they can defend it. And if they can, and can convince you that your own post is garbage, that's someone worth hiring. If they're just ranting, maybe it's time to look at another candidate.

raganwald10• 17 years ago

If I made a practice of asking candidates to list every example they can find online of me being idiotic, my interviews would all be 6-8 hours long...

sethg2• 17 years ago

When I started blogging I made a conscious decision to make everything public and put everything in one place. You go to my blog and you see my opinions about computer programming, Judaism, economics, sex, whatever.

I wonder if my descendants will consider this kind of behavior quaint if not dangerously naïve. Of course, they might say (might will say?), you maintain multiple online identities and even if everything posted under them is publically readable, you give one URL to the guy interviewing you, and then a different one to the officemate who has become your friend, and maybe you keep your really emotionally sticky stuff on a third site that only two or three people know is connected to your true identity. And it would be an extreme social gaffe--a sort of electronic peeping-tom-ism--for anyone to reveal "the guy who posts here also writes this blog" to an unauthorized party.

chadgeidel• 17 years ago

On the contrary - you are now actively aware of and can manage your online "persona." (I do this to an extent, but I'm not very prolific). I think too many people think: "I'm going to post this on the Internet and then hide it." Sorry, folks, if it's on the Internet there's a pretty good chance you won't be able to control it.

samlittlewood2• 17 years ago

Stay that way, unless you are prepared to go to extremes to maintain separate identities (physical, temporal, financial). Anything casual will crumble under pressure, so it's best not to have the false sense of security.

philwelch2• 17 years ago

I hope not. Our descendants should hopefully live in a world where everyone recognizes that we are all human beings. I don't think it will ever be prudent to say What You Can't Say publicly, but a little bit of humanity will be allowed.

inerte• 17 years ago

I remember reading a story about a company who was advised by its lawyers to simply never look for stuff online, for reasons close to yours.

The off chance that you could read about someone's pregnancy (something that you should not ask in a interview) was enough for them to ban the practice.

I don't agree, but it's a good argument. Very protective of the lawyers.

kragen5• 17 years ago

What if the same person has posted HN comments about Obama the Magic Negro? I really don't want to know what they think and why in the context of hiring them.

Although this hasn't come up when I've been on hiring committees, I would want to avoid hiring people who are unusually racist; it's likely to make it hard for them to work with their co-workers down the line, and if they end up making hiring decisions, it might result in racist hiring decisions.

(I say "unusually racist" because people who are completely non-racist are pretty rare, at least in the US. I wouldn't want to be Diogenes the Hiring Manager.)

raganwald10• 17 years ago

A discussion about a Magic Negro need not be racist, however I don't even want to look at what someone has to say on the subject if I'm hiring them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_negro

cousin_it2• 17 years ago

I would want to avoid hiring people who are unusually racist

Uh, would you also favor giving them separate seats in the back of the bus?

And what would you say about a manager that avoided hiring followers of some other ideology, e.g. Communism?

scscsc4• 17 years ago

I think googling someone's name is fair game. You get to see what projects they work on, what communities (i.e. job related) they are part of etc. By yes, there is a line to draw. And definitely facebook and myspace are on the other side.

frossie• 17 years ago

I also hire and I have two answers to that.

First, you are already supposed to ignore facts that you can see when hiring. For example, you are supposed to ignore that you are interviewing a person in a wheelchair, or that is of a different race/age/gender than you, and focus on their ability to meet your requirements. So, when I google (which as others have said, I do to check out open source activity - something I rate highly) I just try not to read personal stuff, and if I can't avoid it I do my best not to let it affect my decisions.

But...

Secondly: if you post content that is inappropriate under most social and professional circumstances under your own name, even if it personally does not ick me, then you show distinct lack of judgement. I quite like my people to show good judgement.

There are a myriad of ways to express yourself online without it ending up in the face of someone casually googling you. Certainly for a technical job, I would be perturbed if you showed blatant ignorance on how to do it.

DanielBMarkham• 17 years ago

Sounds like a great accidental pre-interview question: how is this person at disagreeing with people online?

If you're going to have a presence online, you're going to have to have a public presence. I know lots of people would like for it to be the other way around, but I honestly just don't see that happening.

META: I'd love to upvote this article for the comments, but the article itself isn't that good. So no upvote.

zxcvb• 17 years ago

Asking to see my facebook profile is like asking to see my family photo albums including any pictures that include my friends.

Would your manager allow you to look through every photograph ever taken in their life?

TrevorJ• 17 years ago

I have a personal friend who was called into his manager's office one day. The manager had my friends' myspace page open and was browsing through pictures of him and his girlfriend. This apparently went on for a couple minute with my friend standing there.

The overall gist of the encounter was an attempt on the part of my friends manager to scare him into closing down his accounts (The employer was afraid of my friend talking about the company he works for online.)

yhgfrtygbh2• 17 years ago

Create a page in the manager's name, photoshop a couple of pictures of him and his donkey-friend.

worldhello• 17 years ago

Although it seems fun, there are real laws against doing that...

dmm• 17 years ago

The proper response if a potential employer wants to see a private profile is something like, "Oh of course, I imagine you want to verify my religion, you don't want any of those dirty (jews|christians|muslims) in here." And then you leave.

quisxt• 17 years ago

I wonder how much background checking the feds did on No. 6 before they hired him to be the warden of Alcatraz.

(an absolutely beautiful casting decision)

xsmasher• 17 years ago

Your Facebook page shows all sorts of information that should not affect the hiring process - like your race, religion, marital status, number of children, and sexual orientation. I can't imagine anyone who thinks it would improve the hiring practice.

At the same time I have over a thousand helpful, hopefully well-written posts on message boards that I'll be happy to direct any employers to. They're a better resume than my actual resume, and harder to fake.

s3graham• 17 years ago

I think there's only one suitable name these days for your child: John (or Jennifer) Smith. Or whatever Wolfram says is best for hiding amongst the chaff.

Sure, it's a shame they won't carry the family name, but they'll thank you in 20 years.

miked• 17 years ago

>> So what do I think of sifting through the internet for personal information about candidates? It isn't performance-based.

Two days ago I made one of the bigger decisions of my life: I decided to abandon any attempt to salvage a bio-tech company I co-founded ten years ago. One of the other founders had a quite brilliant invention that I'm more convinced than ever will work. Yet, after ten years, I finally realized that a company is fundamentally its people and how they interact. His performance (narrow sense) as a scientist was tremendous. As a human being? Well, there's the fact that he's been in and out of jail several times for assault and battery as well as drunk and disorderly. And the fact that every time we get close to making a major advance he steps in to sabotage it, which he has done several times by calling customers, vendors and big investors and screaming at them. And the fact that he takes absolutely no responsibility for his actions.

Some of his craziness is apparent from his web page. If he'd had a web page ten years ago I might never have gotten involved and wasted ten years and a lot of money pursuing a dream that depends on someone who has failed at everything in his life and is absolutely intent on making sure he fails at this.

So, raganwald, it all depends on what you mean by "performance". One thing that I am 100% certain of, how someone treats other people, how much they complain instead of take action, etc., is largely what I mean by performance. One dirt bag can make everyone else on the team miserable, and drive the good people away.

I would never ask to log into anyone's social web page. I will always check on their background, including using search engines.

No Hire

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