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Comment by borplk | Hacker News Reader

> an employer that even looks at your social media profile to do a sort of casual "character check" on you, is not one that you should want to work for in the first place.

Companies aren't going to ignore "free information available at your fingertips" about the candidates they hire.

For example a problem candidate may have easily accessible "red flags" on their social media such as racist stuff and drug use.

They could "save" themselves some costs and future problems by knowing that ahead of time.

When companies are trying to optimise their hiring process they aren't going to ignore free additional information about the candidates, they want every last piece they can get their hands on so they can (at least in their mind) make the optimal decision.

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The issue is the false positive/false negative rate and a lack of data in general. Without any measure of how 'good' the info gained via social media is, the data is essentially useless. For large companies like Walmart, they can garner this data and see if it correlates at all. Google used to use GPA in their hiring decisions, but dropped it as it did not correlate to how good an employee is.

For example: drug use. Many people use drugs, but what is the difference between them? Is one type of drug a 'good' drug, like caffeine or nicotine? Burning Man attendees may be good employees and may micro-dose with LSD while at work. Does this make them a good hire? Again, the issue is that there just isn't enough data to properly correlate.

Yes but if you post pictures of yourself holding up signs at a KKK rally then a company hiring you is a PR liability for them if the could've checked and didn't.

Yes, but you've said nothing about the cost-profit ratio about a hypothetical horrible racist. Even discounting the cost of the negative PR, do they still make more for you than otherwise? Is horrible racism something that your company cares about other than the money? Maybe having them work for you is a better thing than them not working at all?

Social media can be very 'noisy' and should be one of a number of factors that are used in decisions.

"Companies aren't going to ignore "free information available at your fingertips" about the candidates they hire."

I do. I often interview candidates in my role as a software developer at my company. Finding them on social media would be trivial. But I don't look for them there. I don't care.

I don't even want to know their politics before giving my recommendation and I'm deeply suspicious of anybody who thinks they would want to know that information.

Second this. I make it a point not to look them up on social media. There have been a couple of occasions where I’ve checked their LinkedIn profile if I feel something’s amiss, but that’s quite rare.

Nobody cares if your SQL is written by nazis as long as nobody knows they're nazis. Nobody cares if your sales guys are alcoholics as long as they bring in busines and don't embarrass the company. By intentionally filtering on irreverent criteria (like the politics and drug habits of back-end devs) you're needlessly shrinking the talent pool.

The time the average hire spends with the company is short enough that having to fire the occasional qualified employee early over "culture fit" really isn't a big deal.

> Nobody cares if your SQL is written by nazis as long as nobody knows they're nazis.

If they're posting nazi stuff on Facebook, everybody knows they're nazis.

That is why I quit LinkedIn

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