3 ms·

What's utterly creepy about this is that employers aren't required to divulge that they made their decision based on unreliable online material. They should be.

What's utterly creepy about this is that employers aren't required to divulge that they made their decision based on unreliable online material. They should be. If a company wants to reject Jason M. Smith because someone posted on 4Chan that Jason W. Smith is an asshole, then fine, but they should be required to admit to their rationale with a straight face.

tjic 17y ago
Since when does anyone owe you information about how they make their decisions? If I dump a girl after four dates, I may tell her exactly why ... or I may say "I just didn't feel that spark". It's nicer, and easier, than saying "the more you talked, the more I realized that you've got a grating accent, I don't think much of your family, and your behaviors aren't in line with your stated life goals". Giving a full length run down of my decision making process just opens the door for a conversation that I don't want to have, and isn't going to make anyone happy. Now, if I can reject someone as a candidate for the position of my wife after four dates without a long discussion, then why can't I reject someone for the position of engineer after zero ?
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
timwiseman 17y ago
I see where you are coming from, but there are a couple of things I think you should consider. First, that "unreliable online material" is likely a social networking site and can be tied to the person in question with a high degree of reliability. This is certainly not perfect, mistaken identity is always possible, as is impersonation, but on social networking sites you can normally say it is more likely than not the right person. I am not saying that it is right to make judgements on someone's employability based on those sites, just that you can often be pretty confident you are talking about the right person. Next, the rational for rejecting an applicant is very frequently "We found a better candidate." Now, the reason they judged that other candidate to be better might be because they found something they didn't like about applicant A on the internet, but that is still often going to be the rationale.

tjic 17y ago

Since when does anyone owe you information about how they make their decisions? If I dump a girl after four dates, I may tell her exactly why ... or I may say "I just didn't feel that spark". It's nicer, and easier, than saying "the more you talked, the more I realized that you've got a grating accent, I don't think much of your family, and your behaviors aren't in line with your stated life goals". Giving a full length run down of my decision making process just opens the door for a conversation that I don't want to have, and isn't going to make anyone happy. Now, if I can reject someone as a candidate for the position of my wife after four dates without a long discussion, then why can't I reject someone for the position of engineer after zero ?

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

timwiseman 17y ago

I see where you are coming from, but there are a couple of things I think you should consider. First, that "unreliable online material" is likely a social networking site and can be tied to the person in question with a high degree of reliability. This is certainly not perfect, mistaken identity is always possible, as is impersonation, but on social networking sites you can normally say it is more likely than not the right person. I am not saying that it is right to make judgements on someone's employability based on those sites, just that you can often be pretty confident you are talking about the right person. Next, the rational for rejecting an applicant is very frequently "We found a better candidate." Now, the reason they judged that other candidate to be better might be because they found something they didn't like about applicant A on the internet, but that is still often going to be the rationale.