Should Job Applicants Provide Facebook Passwords? No. Unless It's the HR Manager Post They're After..

"Please enter your facebook log-in details." If that were one of the requests on a job application form, what would you do? When I first noticed streams of comments this week on the topic of employers asking (or demanding) to be able to view candidates' facebook pages I have to admit to thinking that this was just a limited bit of nonsense in some backward part of a distant state across the Pond.

It is real, though, and, whilst I am not sure how many actual instances have arisen or whether it might be restricted to applicants for professions where it might (I say 'might' - that doesn't mean I agree it should) be reasonable to make a thorough check of someone's personal publications, it is a worrying development.

If it is something that Human Resource Managers have decided to start including in the process of selecting from what must be an ever increasing pile of candidates for jobs in these days of high unemployment levels then I would like to add my voice to the objections being raised.

My first thought is 'Why just facebook?' This makes me think that there was a group of very intense and well-meaning sorts sat around a table one day who made the decision in a virtual vacuum, with little or no informed advice. One can imagine the discussion:

"Did you hear about that man who posted rude pictures on his ex-wife's facebook page?"
"Oh, terrible. Seems to be more of an unsocial network to me..."
"Yes, lots of youngsters putting silly images of themselves on there. No shame. What is the world coming to..."
"When I was young..."
"Exactly. It sounds a horrid place and not somewhere I'd want to let my children go."
"I suppose our employees do use it. Who knows what they're saying about working here..."
"Or us..."
"Hmmm. We ought to do something to check."
"We do. I regularly Google the names of some - you know, the ones we'd be worried about."
"So you know what they're doing there then?"
"No, there's some private setting or something they use to hide stuff from us. We would have to have their log-in thing."
"How about asking all our new applicants for that? That would give us some background as to what mischief they get up to and also probably cut down the number that get through to interview as well."
"Good idea. I'll get that added to the form. If they don't like it then that's a good indication that we wouldn't want to trust them anyway. Probably the sort that will come in half awake after being on that internet all night."

What I do find odd, though, is why this is all about facebook. There are rather more places than just the one everyone talks about out there and, of course, Google+ which has so far survived remarkably longer than I had anticipated in being readily accessible at work and in the Colleges I know about. Whilst one might expect a better class of people using the latter, if the HR Committee is going to want to look for the dirt then they really do have to realise that the social networking world is not called facebook. It seems that uninformed managers are beginning to use the term rather like they might use Biro or Hoover.

Then there are blogs which they don't seem to have thought much about at all. That's where I would write the stuff that I am most likely to be thrown out for, where HR would see what I thought about something, or what I got up to In The Village and that would be far more informative than some snaps on facebook.

It strikes me as quite wrong. In the rare instances of someone being suspected of publishing comments that damage their employer's reputation, provide information that should not be made public for commercial or other reasons or in cases of bullying then one would expect investigations to be facilitated to ascertain the accuracy of accusations with specific permissions being granted but some general rule that says someone can roam freely through areas that an individual has chosen, probably on good advice, to restrict to certain friends, is wrong, very wrong.

I can imagine the band of social do-gooders raging against my comments and saying things like "If they have to hide what they say or do then they shouldn't say or do it." My view would be to say to the individuals concerned that they should continue to decide what they wish to be in the public domain and, if they're asked to reveal more, look elsewhere. Unless they're applying for an HR Manager post - in which case they should tidy up their act temporarily first, supply all the passwords with a nice smile, get the job and then fire whoever instigated this in the first place!

The section below is from ZDNetUK's article by David Meyer:

Asking job applicants for passwords is not in itself unlawful in the UK, according to Ed Goodwyn, partner in the employment team at law firm Pinsent Mason.
This disturbing practice represents a grave intrusion into personal privacy.
– US senators Richard Blumenthal and Charles Schumer
There is also unlikely to be a breach of the Data Protection Act if the applicant hands over login details willingly, he noted. However, Goodwyn agreed there are some risks for prospective hirers.
"If the employer relies on a protected characteristic which is apparent from the Facebook pages (such as that the candidate is a trade union activist, is disabled, etc.) then that will be unlawful," Goldwyn said. "Furthermore, once the employment relationship is formed, any further use of Facebook in this way without further permission from the employee would be a breach of the implied duty of trust and confidence."
Companies could also face legal problems if they treat a worker less favourably for refusing the request, he noted.

Why am I here?

No, I know about the Mum & Dad thing, it's not that sort of 'why am I here?' I was just wondering out loud why I spend so much time on Google+ nowadays and used to spend similar vast numbers of hours on twitter, blogs and, rather longer ago now, Facebook.

Twitter I understand. Tweeting is like shouting at the television, except more people hear what I say. It's easy, just type a few words as I'm watching something and get a kick out of making someone laugh. It's also been a useful place to get great links to things that are going on in the worlds that interest me and, with careful choice of who to follow, provided a newsreel that was almost essential reading each morning and still is something I'll scroll through once or twice a week, especially for local news and where the people haven't started on Google+.

Facebook was once a place where I thought I would build a sort of virtual world of Me, with huge volumes of photo albums, blogs routed to its Notes pages and Facebook pages for this and that, events I could invite people to or write about and generally keep up-to-date with what friends were saying. I use the term 'friends' loosely - and Facebook friends almost deserves its own entry in the dictionary. The 150 or so who were in my list comprised a strange collection of family, socially-inclined relatives, ex-students needing help and geeky nice people I met at conferences. And a bundle of others I didn't really know very well or occasionally worked with but added as friends anyway. Now its only use is as the place to post an urgent message for one of my children and I genuinely can't remember when I last specifically visited the site or changed my status as Google+ and Twitter updates do that automatically. The funny thing is that most of my 'Facebook friends' probably still think I'm really active there.

Blogs are great for articles and I do love writing and publishing my thoughts and views. So instead of writing piles of notes and uploading them to VLEs or digging out Dreamweaver to edit my web sites I can simply type, add and publish. Job done. I don't think I've changed how or why I use blogs much at all over the last ten years. Apart from Blogger's recent misbehaviour with page links and the advent of Posterous making publishing almost anything delightfully simple being naughty and nice respectively, if I want to write more than 140 characters and also refer to it again in future then a blog has been the answer.

And then along comes Google+. I jumped in at the very start and now have the dubious honour of being ranked by CircleCount in the top 600 men in the UK. Quite what that actually means I'm not sure but, bearing in mind that there are fewer MPs than that, it can't stay long at that level and I'll surely be plunging before long to the ranks of those who ramble on about this and that and have an average number of followers. But I didn't join to get some rank anyway. Why do I write stuff there? I hardly know any of my followers. Or, for that matter, those I follow. I get a brief description of what they do for most and think they may be of interest in one or more areas of the world I inhabit and they go into one or other Circles. Occasionally someone will have a query so I feel that I can be of help and publish advice or even an answer. Equally, there are some damn fine minds there who can provide answers and inspiration.  But that's not the only reason I'm there. The news is good. Like the Twitter newsreel I mentioned above, the Google+ stream is something I'll scroll through several times a day. But even that's not what it was as I now have so many people in the stream from all walks of life and background that it's neither one thing nor the other. One moment I am reading about some fascinating new ideas about teaching and the next there's a video of Andorra's entry in Eurovision. Or a cat doing something cute.

So why am I here (or there, as this is mainly about the time I spend on Google+)?

The World's Simplest On-line Safety Policy (well... America's, at least...)

This is an excellent article on the subject of child protection and how managers scared of their institution being sued ban access and stifle communication.

Someone should now write in a similar vein with adjustments to reflect UK legislation instead of America's. I'll have a go myself if nothing appears soon. I am tired of hearing about decent and good colleagues being threatened with dismissal because they share information over social network sites, their own web sites, wikis or whatever or dare to use their own e-mail rather than the institution's to communicate with a student.

And if you're reading this and can only think of one reason why any teacher might want to do so then I sincerely hope that my 14-year-old daughter and 9 and 12-year-old sons are not being taught by you or staff under your control.

It is time for good, innovative and decent teaching staff to stand up and be trusted.

Draft Blogger

Well done, Blogger! I have so often been tempted to move to another blog application where much smarter designs and simpler editing of the look and feel have been available. The choice of initial designs has been fixed since the year dot or shortly after until now . . .

Although still in 'draft' they say, Google have opened up some really smart developments for us bloggers with their Blogger Template Designer. Looks like I'll stick around a bit longer!

Have a look and start using this for your own blogs. Or go to Blogger in Draft and log in as usual. Have fun.

Windows Live Writer

Just noticed this. There's a blog tool in Windows Live which may or may not be particular useful - I'll try it out and see how it compares to this or tumblr etc. later - but what may be useful is the Windows Live Writer which allows composition of stuff off-line and then updates when you do connect.

As someone who has a decidedly dodgy connection these days, this could save a lot of bad language.

webtools updates

There's a web log now which I'm using to update the 'updates' page on the webtools site. Now, obviously, you could just go to the web site and see but if you want an RSS feed then you can pick that up from the blog. If you need help with that bit let me know!

Through the glass, darkly

Landed on tumblr which may provide one solution for my problem in what to suggest instead of Blogger. Only had a quick look and grabbed the nice address six.tumblr.com while I was there which I shall now proceed to experiment with. Not sure how the RSS feed works but it certainly looks simple, very simple, and clear and is another way for any of you to publish stuff like this.

Why Blogger gets banned

Just returned from a very interesting Web Technologies Day, organised by RSC Eastern, at which I was, as ever, keen to get people using web logs and talking about how Blogger makes this pretty simple and how the built-in RSS feed can be used to weave a bit of magic. I was initially dismayed to find that blogspot.com urls were blocked by the venue (an FE institution) but they were kind enough to remove them for us on this occasion. What I hadn't appreciated before, though, was the reason for the block in the first place. That is the 'Next Blog' feature that is built in to a navigation bar that comes with all the templates. This is a bizarre and, in my view, totally useless feature, taking people to another random blog which could throw virtually anything onto the user's screen. I've written to the Blogger people to suggest that this is revised at the very least and preferably removed as I can't see how anyone finds it of any value.

Just as I don't want young or easily-offended people in my sessions to get offensive material thrust at them when they might just have thought it was my next blog or another on an associated topic that would be presented, so too, I imagine would someone with a passion for, say, Something Deep & Dark be particular happy with my e-learning ramblings popping up between Revues of Gothic Blackness and Even Darker In The Night or whatever their taste may be.

Anyway, there are ways to edit the template that I've discovered and you'll see that the whole bar has disappeared on this blog but (a) it's fiddly and (b) I've lost the useful Dashboard link so it's not ideal. I also understand that the contract entered into upon setting up a Blogger account does require that users retain specified features of the navigation bar but it does not appear to specify that one has to include the annoying links and I would relish the publicity that Blogger banning me for not showing the bar as I don't think I have much choice.

So, if you want to know how to do it I can supply some instructions but what I really hope is that Blogger see sense and, at least, make the Next Blog an optional thing. If they don't, and in anticipation that they won't, I am now on the look out for an alternative web log provider that is as simple to use and which can be simply edited, can incorporate the same types of additional content and also looks good. Suggestions much appreciated and I'll let readers know what happens.