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City of Bozeman, MT demands job applicants’ social media passwords
June 19th, 2009 written by Jeff Hershberger
I knew you would all love this story.
“In order for us to get access to the chosen candidate’s information, we need to be able to view their page,” Sullivan said, according to a transcript of the interview. “And so that’s the way we’ve chosen to go about doing it. As far as we know, there’s no other way to get into their specific Face book page.”
Topics: Social Media Blog
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I can understand that Bozeman wants to be able to screen applicants to make sure they behave professionally. That is, after all, why we should always assume that anyone can read anything we might post online. But to ask for passwords was crossing a huge line, it goes against everything we’ve been taught about Internet security, AND it’s not a necessary step for reaching their goal. As the article states they could easily create their own Facebook page and have applicants connect to that. And of course the legal implications are incredibly thorny.
It seems that by using this system to prevent future employees from marring their reputation, they’ve marred it themselves. I was glad to read that the Bozeman had rescinded the policy—after getting worldwide media attention condemning it. I expect it will take some time for them to rebuild their reputation, but it teaches us a valuable lesson. Whether we use social media for marketing, customer service, public relations, brand management, or as Bozeman wanted, to monitor information and people, we need to first understand how these systems work and proceed accordingly.
Comment by Heidi Cool Twitter: @hacool — June 23, 2009 @ 11:00 am