Careerbuilder has crossed a professional line. If you are looking for a job and post your resume on www.careerbuilder.com, they have now made accessible for recruiters and employers to see you social network pages and sites. They sent out an e-mail bragging about their new "applicant explorer". I checked it out and immediately asked my boss to fill out negative comments. I clicked on a resume, this person has been a chemist for 2 years, unfortunate layoff, they put their resume on Careerbuilder to find a job, just like millions of people have. So now when I go to view her resume, I get the resume, and then to the side had links to their facebook page, myspace page, linked in, blog and yahoo profile!!! My mouth dropped, I clicked on another resume, there i find links to all of their personal sites, as well as anything that was ever written about them in articles on the web (newspapers, sports, fundraisers) it's all on there. And if you have a common name like John Doe, imagine how many of those articles aren't about you! It is one thing to join a companies Social network on your own freewill, but Careerbuilder is posting these links without candidates consent!
I've copied below the information they are posting on resumes:
Get an exclusive peek...
You have been selected to participate in a beta group to test CareerBuilder.com's latest time-saving tool, Applicant Explorer.
You now have the ability to get a comprehensive snapshot of a candidates' footprint on the Web from within CareerBuilder.com's Resume Database. This complimentary feature will give you access to relevant information generated from:
- Social networking sites
- Professional and personal Blogs
- Personal and corporate Websites
- Press releases
- Discussion and forum postings
- Articles and news stories published online
And from an employers prospective, if we look at this information provided and the candidate does not get the job, what is stopping them from saying they were discriminated against? My company does not look up this information on our candidates, but you have now made it readily available and viewable. In some situations, I don't have to even click on the links provided to read the first few lines of a blog or website article. By providing these links, an employer can quickly see a candidates age, race, sexual orientation, if they are disabled or overweight, which is not questions on our application.
I would recommend making all of your information on your networking sites private, if you have a picture up-make sure it's a respectful picture-or take it down. This is just an easy way for employers to sneak into your personal life and it makes it even easier to be discriminated against. So since I'm large, can you honestly tell me how many people are going to look at my social networks and not call me for an interview because of that? I think quite a few.
1 comment:
Applicant Explorer is meant as a time saving tool. Many recruiters were taking info from the resume and searching google to find these pages on their own. Applicant Explorer obeys privacy settings on social networking sites as well as following your privacy settings on CB. Let me provide 3 scenarios where AppEx is good for the candidate.
1. Your linkedin profile is up to date but you have not logged into careerbuilder for 6 months. So if your employed the recruiter won't bother you and if your not the recruiter has more up to date work history.
2. Your a graphic artist or a journalist and the recruiter can find examples of your work on the web.
3. Your a software engineer and the recruiter finds a blog where you post some code. Now the recruiter knows you are familiar with a particular technology not found on your resume.
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