Social Media In Hiring Decisions

The presence of social media in hiring decisions is something that has become more prevalent with technological advancements. As the usage of social media websites becomes more frequent, the use of these websites in hiring decisions also raises. Issues that arise with social media sites interfering with the hiring process include legality versus ethicality conflicts and discrimination due to specific social identities reflected on profiles of the individual applicants.
Corporations have in the recent decades been cracking down on ethical issues in the workplace, however, there are frequent issues that arise which question the values of the business versus legality of common issues where decision making is involved. One section of everyday

If the employer who is recruiting applicants believes in using social media sites when looking into applicants falls into being both legal and ethical in terms of their stance on the issue, this could lead to potential discrimination upon the applicant based upon their specific social identity class. There are risks involved when social media accounts are misused by employers. Some of these potential risks include, borderline invasion of privacy, and the lack of evidence that the information obtained is a fair representation of the individual. Even though the information that is available on the internet is completely open to the public eye, employers can take the use of social media sites too far in some cases. An example of the use of employee social media accounts being misused by the employers is when in the city of Bozeman, Montana required all pending applicants to provide their usernames and passwords to all personal and business related social media sites. This practice was initially defended by the city because they viewed it as just another form of background evaluation for potential employees, however this received a nationwide public backlash and the practice was discontinued by the city (Brown, Vaughn). Victoria R. Brown and E. Daly Vaughn conducted a study that showed the influence on hiring decisions that social media accounts had. Their finding showed

On the other hand, women showed an increase in the rate of which they would be recommended for a job as their social media accounts were examined by employers. This shows that employers used the personal lives of the women applicants while taking into consideration their hiring potential while with the male applicants, the employers did not value to information found on social media sites as much as they did with the female applicants