"We Googled You" - Harvard Business Review Interactive Case Study
Echo: "We Googled You"
Hathaway Jones's CEO has found a promising candidate to open the company's flagship store in Shanghai. Should a revelation on the Internet disqualify her now?
In brief: Managers are asked what they would do about hiring a job candidate where a Google search discloses some problematic college activism (h/t many-2-many). It's pretty interesting to read the responses ("I routinely Google people I'm going to interview or be interviewed by.").
I know what the typical Net evangelist would say, that we should all be forgiving, and get used to living in a goldfish-bowl. While that's one common sentiment, note it won't be the evangelist who suffers if they're wrong. It's far more interesting to see some of the negative thoughts of people who actually make such decisions.
By Seth Finkelstein | posted in google | on June 09, 2007 08:20 PM (Infothought permalink)
I'm always bemused by other people's willingness to assert that I shouldn't care about privacy. "Get over it" is usually part of the spiel.
Saying employers should ignore indiscretions available on the web (what? a six-month statute of limitation for online gaffes, maybe?) is like saying that there is no age discrimination (which, unlike Googling potential employees, is against the law): Sounds nice in theory. Doesn't work out in fact. Probably can't work out in fact.
Re. the last sentence on your post. Woo Hoo! At last! We agree on something!
Googling "Hugh MacLeod" brings up 330,000 pages, most of them seem to be directed about me, at least in the front-end pages. Most of them are pretty good-natured, though, thank the stars.