Up to 76% of hiring managers profile job candidates on social media

Up to 76% of hiring managers profile job candidates on social media

Be careful about what you post online. Up to 76% of hiring managers review the social media posts of job applicants:

Hiring managers in information technology and sales are the most likely to use social networks to screen candidates; professional and business services were least likely.
IT: 76 percent
Sales: 65 percent
Financial services:
61 percent
Health care: 59 percent
Retail: 59 percent
Manufacturing: 56 percent
Professional and business services: 55 percent

Source: Number of Employers Using Social Media to Screen Candidates Has Increased 500 Percent over the Last Decade – CareerBuilder
Having no online social media presence may be viewed as a negative by a hiring manager, especially for young job applicants.
Hiring managers suggest they are looking for issues related to the job position. About 40% say they check on the social media activities of those currently employed:

Forty-one percent of employers say they use social networking sites to research current employees, nearly a third (32 percent) use search engines to check up on current employees, and more than one in four (26 percent) have found content online that has caused them to reprimand or fire an employee.

There are ramifications in terms of how this impacts who can post online and how this gives some workers, whose speech has stronger protections, a louder and more influential voice on social media.

In my state, all government workers are protected by state law, from firing or mal-treatment due to their political views. In most states, public school and college teachers are protected by tenure. Here, public sector workers have greater protections to promote (via social media propaganda) their political views than do private sector workers who have no protection. This can lead to a distortion in perspective and understanding of public policy issues.
“Protected posters” may still suffer ill will from friends or colleagues but they will not lose their job. If fired, as has happened in my state, they can file suit and receive a large payout.
This creates a social media atmosphere where all views are equal but some views are “more equal” than others. This enhances the friction-less nature of social media propaganda: those with speech protected jobs (mostly government workers) can promote more views than those who may wish to dissent from those views, leading to the unimpeded flow of biased and untrue propaganda messaging.

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