Headhunters Can't Tell Anything From Facebook Profiles 209
New submitter sfcat writes "Companies, headhunters and recruiters increasingly are using social media sites like Facebook to evaluate potential employees. Most of this is due to a 2012 paper from Northern Illinois Univ. that claimed that employee performance could be effectively evaluated from their social media profiles. Now a series of papers from other institutions reveal exactly the opposite result. 'Recruiter ratings of Facebook profiles correlate essentially zero with job performance,' write the researchers, led by Chad H. Van Iddekinge of FSU (abstract). Not only did the research show the ineffectiveness of using social media in evaluating potential employees, it also showed a measurable biases of the recruiters against minorities (African-American and Latino) and against men in general."
Color me shocked (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow. Who'd have seen that coming.
Re:Color me shocked (Score:5, Interesting)
Any employer basing its decision to hire me based on social network profiles is not an employer I'd like to have. I don't have a FB profile and I don't see a reason to start now. My current employer seems to agree. During the interview I was honest and upfront about it, even though they didn't ask I told them straight away "I know companies these days scour prospective emplyee social network profiles, but the thing is I'm not on FB, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, tumblr, whatever-it-is-the-site-of-the-day". Their responsa was "We have no interest in your private life".
I do have a profile on Linkedin, which I update regularly, though. And by regularly I mean probably once a month, or so. The only other remotely social networking I do is flickr. I do have an account, which I use to share photos and discuss photography with other enthusiasts like myself.
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"I know companies these days scour prospective emplyee social network profiles, but the thing is I'm not on FB, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, tumblr, whatever-it-is-the-site-of-the-day". Their responsa was "We have no interest in your private life".
Sounds like a good company.
Re:Color me shocked (Score:5, Insightful)
It is because it has experienced management in place. The companies that have fresh Grads from Business Management colleges are the ones that have the fools that think that your facebook profile is important.
The #1 problem with all companies in the past decade. Putting a snot nosed 20 somethings in a management position. I don't care if they have a PHD in something, they are stupid in regards to managing people. The ONLY way to learn how to manage people is by doing it and that takes time. Honestly Management age brackets should start at 35 years old as the YOUNGEST unless they prove themselves to be some kind of people management savant.
Otherwise you get these idiotic ideas that digging into your employees personal life has any relevancy to their work life. I have worked places where these idiots out of college tried to make everyone post something positive about he company daily on their Facebook/etc as a part of your employment. They claimed it was for "morale boosting". It was simply an attempt at free marketing.
Re:Color me shocked (Score:4, Insightful)
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Wait, so your solution to young managers not having experience is to delay them getting experience until they're older? How does that solve anything apart from pissing on young people?
I think he said that young people shouldn't be put in management positions. They can work other positions in a company, particularly in groups where they can develop people skills, and by working for a manager, observe what works and what doesn't. An aspiring manager could meet with an actual manager in the company and ask questions like "Why don't you check employee's Facebook pages? I heard in school that it can really help." And the actual manager can reply "We've found that in the real world, Faceboo
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Wait, so your solution to young managers not having experience is to delay them getting experience until they're older? How does that solve anything apart from pissing on young people?
Well, it goes like this: The older folks who are being discriminated against in favour of the young wheel-re-inventing over-time-seeking no-family-life having folks for the positions of programmers, or working the assembly line, etc. general activity of actually doing the (with an unfortunate tendency towards working harder instead of smarter) should be promoted to team-leaders to pass their experience to the green-horn rookies; And as these age a bit more, move them up into management positions where their
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Or put them in management positions where they don't have enough power to harm much?
Re:Color me shocked (Score:5, Interesting)
The main difference between the military and the private sector is in the preparation. The military has a specialized training program (OCS) specifically tailored for leadership principles that all applicants must pass before becoming officers. That lasts for several months. And, for young officers, there's a great support system of experienced officers and NCO's who can give them advice.
Private corporations generally don't offer training and mentorship programs any more due to cost cutting measures. It's common to have people promoted to management positions with no training whatsoever. And the closest civilian equivalent, an MBA, seems to breed arrogance.
Re:Color me shocked (Score:5, Insightful)
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You cite the _military_ as example of successful management? What planet are you living on? The military is the most abysmal failure in that regard. If they were not kept alive by astronomically huge money infusion all the time, they would collapse immediately. Their situation is not even remotely related to what a company has to do in order to be successful.
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But how would management in that field have any relation at all to a field where profits are mandatory for survival? Being an Officer in the military and being a manager in the industry are completely different qualifications. I merely point that out. Yes, there is the myth that an officer in the military can do anything successfully, but that is just cheap propaganda to suck in the gullible.
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And how exactly are you supposed to wreck and loot entire industires if you don't put inexpierienced, ambitious, rakish young lackies in charge of them?
Re:Color me shocked (Score:4, Interesting)
Same here, potential future employers are not going to find me on any social network. And if I were a recruiter, I'd probably consider having extensive profiles online a negative quality -- indicative of spending too much time posing and not enough actually working.
Re:Color me shocked (Score:5, Insightful)
And if I were a recruiter, I'd probably consider having extensive profiles online a negative quality -- indicative of spending too much time posing and not enough actually working.
Yeah, those horrible employees that have evenings and weekends where they can do things other than working for you, how dare they.
Stick with the simplest, what people do in their own time is their own concern.
Re: Color me shocked (Score:4, Insightful)
The only thing lamer than cultivating an extensive on-line social network is doing it during evenings and weekends instead of during working hours like 99.9% of social network enthusiasts.
I would assume that a potentially worthwhile employee is doing something a little more enriching and/or constructive during their free time.
Such judgement for a leisure activity! People have off-hours, people who work hard need off-hours even more. Some people read books, some watch cat videos, some poke around in other people's lives on Facebook. Again: judge people on the task that you want them to do for you, not what they choose to do outside of their interaction with you.
The snobbery on this site is so tiring.
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So says the athiest who had a hangover on New Year's Day and doesn't speak English as a first language and likes Torchwood and uses the word Fuck and develops Android Apps but is looking for something else.
And I've only read the first two pages of the comments you've posted to Slashdot while logged in.
Pot/kettle. Looks like you have a plenty extensive online profile on a site which is pretty much one of the oldest social networks of your "tribe" (nerds) and you look down on non-nerds who do the same thing
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I choose not to use FB and so on myself, but I don't think that implies your assertion that I look down on those (nerds or otherwise) who do. I just said that, inasmuch as an extensive profile says anything at all about the professional qualities of a potential employee, I would probably not count it as positive. That's not the same as looking down on someone, or at least I don't think it is.
On the other hand, I understand that it can come across as smug to point out explicitly that I don't use, say, FB.
For
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"And if I were a recruiter, I'd probably consider having extensive profiles online a negative quality -- indicative of spending too much time posing and not enough actually working."
(and don't worry - I didn't go into the bit with your really disgusting habits like running unpatched Windows XP)
Maybe a recruiter wouldn't check Slashdot - maybe they would. But you sure look like you spend a bunch of time on here from the frequency of comments - and yet you were dissing other people who spend "too much time p
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Yes well, okay, I still don't think it is an accurate assertion that I was dissing or dismissing or looking down upon, but clearly you disagree. I guess my mistyping posting as posing, which I just noticed in your quote, didn't help matters along. And your calling my habits disgusting is what, a compliment? I almost feel a need to point out I was kidding about the XP box, but surely that was sufficiently obvious.
Anyway, thanks for replying. Whether or not you believe me is immaterial, but I honestly don't t
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Yeah, I was just picking on the XP box rather than the watching "nature documentaries" bit because, well... It was a joke to pick on the XP box, because the average HR person would be more interested in nature of the documentaries and whether you would be likely to do that on work time (people do, amazingly enough).
I'm happy to agree that you don't really (or don't realise that you do) look down on other services. Certainly posing => posting changes the nature of your post significantly!
Anyway, I think
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I wasn't aware we were discriminating against Torchwood fans now?
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Oh, this was just example data and not judgement. My apologies; carry on.
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Under US federal law, discrimination against persons under 40 years old is perfectly legal (although states can enact stricter legislation). It may or may not be a good idea, but you can't get into trouble with the EEOC for it.
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30-40 still fits the range in question. GP is still relevant.
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> hire me based on social network profiles is not an employer I'd like to have
In today's job market the employer you'd like to have is the one that would hire you. Why he gives you the job is irrelevant since the alternative is to have no job and die.
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If you have no sig other to help you through the tough times, no family to depend on, and no friends to turn to...there is still that horrible horrible government thing. You will not die without a job, but you certainly need to be confident enough in who you are to not blow your own brains out for fear of the "no job and die" beliefs.
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They are database admins, and their databases are shit. You give them a job spec which they turn into a query by adding some meaningless buzzwords. They check their stack of CVs for matches, maybe email a few people. None of them fit so their job as admin is to bullshit both sides into thinking they are perfect for each other.
It would be better if you had direct access to the database, but then you would be able to tell that it is worthless and wouldn't pay them to do queries any more.
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HR routinely gets the wannabes, where huge Ego and really small skills collide. Short-term, this is a brilliant solution. Long-term, it is fatal.
Biases (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: Biases (Score:3, Interesting)
They are biased against men because if they hire to many men they get hit with a discrimination lawsuit (of course, hiring all women would because perfectly fine in this feminized age) This is even true when the men are more qualified (and if equally qualified, I'd always choose a man over a younger woman because he won't miss time die to childbirth. Unless of course the woman is sexy and it's a position wherever that would benefit, like sales or bartender)
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Human resources is with little doubt one of those necessary evils, and acts as a firewall against the unwashed masses which includes quite a mix of people ranging from liars to incompetent to "don't understand the market", etc. And the nature of the work means constantly dealing with people you have never seen before.
Re:Biases (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think anyone is suggesting HR is not necessary but to continue your analogy:
If the the HR / recruiting firm pairing at some places I have worked was a firewall/IPS pair it would:
Have an insanely high false negative rate frequently forwarding malicious traffic with will known signatures
Drop large amounts of legitimate traffic to important assets like the web farm, with log events of "just because, or I don't remember why".
Forward traffic originally destine for other unused address to live hosts without any filtering to meet some minimum number of resumes^H^H^H^H connections setups.
Interpret it policy rules on a per connection basis, frequently with different and non-deterministic results and log nothing.
Is anyone surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
Problems with using social media aside, headhunters are fucking lazy morons. I've never personally had to deal with them, thankfully, but one of my friends, being a consultant, does often and they are universally wastes of flesh. They are not concerned with trying to find the best candidate for the job, carefully vetting resumes and checking experience. Rather they are interested in finding someone as fast as possible and mating them with a job so they can get their fee. They rarely have the faintest idea of what they are talking about in terms of technical requirements and so on.
So ya, I'm sure this doesn't help. Particularly since what people put on their social networking sites varies a ton. Some people have lots of work related things, some have none. Doesn't really translate to job performance, just to what they like to share or not share.
Sounds like more what they are doing, particularly based on the discrimination report, is finding people they think "look good" meaning largely white and particularly good looking female, and sending them on.
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They're not lazy. They're smart.
They know they get paid for the people hired. The more shots in the dark the more people hired and the more commissions.
Just another example of incentives that cause bad behavior instead of good behavior.
So what does it say... (Score:3)
So what does it say about people who don't have a facebook profile? I'm guessing that we're scary dangerous people, who are terrorists and working to subvert the government. /sarc
Actually might not be far from the truth these days in the minds of some flappy headed nutbags.
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I have a suspicion that for people w/o a FB profile, the fix is to find a FB profile of someone with a similar name, and assume that they can gather sufficient information about that person to make a determination about you. In short I don't think they really know what they are doing (as evidenced by the story itself) so any method of giving themselves a feeling that they are getting something of value will do. But that's mostly just a suspicion, and you could be right.
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The scary thing about these sorts of shenanigans by companies is what if you're of average height, average build, brown hair, and your name is John Smith.
How can you know that the "investigation" they do into your facebook profile is actually on the right person?
Re:So what does it say... (Score:5, Insightful)
How can you know that the "investigation" they do into your facebook profile is actually on the right person?
Does that matter to HR? They have no engineering deadlines to meet, and no products to deliver to the customer. In a large company (where HR is most likely to be a significant group) HR would be well insulated from financial results of the business. Nobody is going to double-check resumes that they threw away.
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I have a suspicion that for people w/o a FB profile, the fix is to find a FB profile of someone with a similar name, and assume that they can gather sufficient information about that person to make a determination about you.
There's a person in Facebook with same name as mine, with a cool crow mask on his face. I always wish that his profile is used to make conclusions about me.
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Solution:
Groom a deceptive online identity designed to get you work and stay off social media for other purposes as they are just vain entertainment. That others do not is to your advantage.
If you want to get anywhere in life you must understand the value of lying and hypocritcal behavior towards your many institutional enemies. Ethics are for application to friends and neutrals. It's not sociopathic to treat the portion of society which is genuinely your enemy as your enemy. We are conditioned otherwise, b
Wrong! (Score:5, Funny)
Since there is zero correlation, it is like reading tea leaves and a headhunter can reach any interpretation possible. Meanwhile, the zero correlation means any tea leaf reading cannot be falsified.
Arbitrary opinions and no valid way of measurement --- which makes the interpretations completely subject to whim! It is the perfect industry, possibly only surpassed by the "how to write a successful resume" sector of the economy!
With no right or wrong answers, what's not to LOVE!!!
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I think you are to something more thn you think. Social media provides a plausable somewhat reasonable sounding explanation for their actions, when/if they need to explain themselves to either their boss, the client firm, and maybe some legal process. Even if they have to craft said explaination after the fact.
It looks like most of the problem is that.. (Score:2)
...no one is doing actual data analysis. From what I'm seeing in the story, recruiters are 'sort of getting a feel for' candidtes by looking at fb, twitter, and other social media pages, rather than using standardized analysis to do some variety of a Briggs-Meyer analysis of the candidates and compare those results with the requirements of the job posting they are looking to match the candidates up with. Granted I don't expect that any of the recruiters involved have even the slightest idea of how to match
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Indeed. Recruiters are mostly incompetent. Got a good look at that at Google, were they were not hiding it very well and I had inside information in addition. (Some insiders got pretty fed up by not being able to hire people they urgently needed...)
They then kept contacting me year after year, until I finally told them that yes, they could re-interview me at my usual consulting fee for time spent. That finally got the message across.
My own experience. (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a profile on a business social network. I am a physicist (PHD) , and have worked a long time in science.
Everybody looking at my profile for longer than 20 seconds can figure that out.
I have a solid electronics/condensed matter/analog measurement background.
Everybody looking at my profile for longer than 40 seconds can figure that out.
But as it happens, i am a curious guy with diverse programming skills, which I have been using *from time to time*, but i know enough to talk to IT experts who really know what they are doing
Everybody looking at my profile for longer than 1 minute can figure that out.
So what i typically get/got is:
-we need a junior PHP programmer (yeah, sure - come on, admit you just searched for "PHP" and ignored the other skills, which you never heard about)
-do you like a job as *expert* for [Skill X, which was listed explicitely as "little experience"] (Oh, you like to sell anybody to you customer. At least you read my profile, but, thanks, no)
-in the interview (after beeing asked by the headhunter to apply): why do you apply here? (Yeah, because the company you hired to look for me "found" me - obviously they did not infrom you at all about the previous conversation.)
And what i see in the company i work for:
-I get a profile from our internal headhunters, whithout any infromation how that got onto my table.
-I should evaluate people for things of which i have no idea at all, but "it sounded similar" (to the HR intern)
-50% of hour HR seem to be interns. The HR has probably the highest rotation rate in the company; even the management has a felt half-life time of a year (sure, thats going to work out)
Re:My own experience. (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm hunting for a job and there are days I feel like poking a blunt stick in my eye because it would be less painful. I blame HR and head hunters because of my experience in the past with them. (They are almost all totally incompetent.)
My current resume says I'm an application and database programmer. (In short: Oracle, PostgreSQL, C#, and Java is my current forte.) My blessing and curse is that I'm a jack-of-all-trades so I work in just about any language and I have. On the job boards, companies see the word "Java" on my resume (because I worked on Java apps recently) and that I worked on web apps 7+ years ago and they immediately assume I'm a current Java EE programmer. Phone interviews last all of about 3 minutes before they realize that I'm not who they are looking for. I don't get calls for anything else. I try to bury the Intranet stuff I did so it doesn't stand out and I try to highlight the ability for jack-of-all-trades. Doesn't quite work and I'm sure as hell not going to put "Not a web developer" on my resume. (Apparently, it's a mortal sin to list anything "negative" so I can't put the word "not" on my resume or cover letter.)
So, here I am. Stuck. Unable to properly convey on job boards what I can do and getting the wrong kinds of calls. I think I'm going to go find a blunt stick.
Re: My own experience. (Score:3, Insightful)
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Jack of all trades is not the way to find a job. Companies are looking to fill a specific position. Craft a resume high lighting each of your specialities.
You're right. Jack of all trades is not how I advertise myself on the surface. I always start out with "application and database developer". I try to let my history speak for itself. Unfortunately, companies also don't know what they're looking for a lot of times. I read so many job openings with requirements that just reek because they are a list of disjointed abilities that no single person can have (without training) -- even if they are already a jack of all trades. HR and managers typically have a
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As the others have said, tailor your resume to emphasize that you are jack-of-all-trades.
I'm a CCIE and have a doctorate in computer networks, have authored an RFC, and now approaching 20 years of experience in the field, which supposedly puts me into the camp of network expert.
Expect, in reality, my work in last six months has consisted of e.g.:
- Database design, operations and reporting (MSSQL and Mysql)
- AJAX programming (Javascript), and all the intricasies that bunch of di
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This leads me to see the following problems that make you unfit for hiring in a high-unemployment market where employers can pick-and-choose:
I am quite fit for employment. All of my previous employers have been very, very happy with my work. What I am not an expert at is selling myself. Part of that stems from an inability to lie or stretch the truth as well as many others.
1. You seem uninterested in jobs that might require you to stretch and learn other skills
Bzzz. Wrong.
I knew nothing about web development before I did it. I knew nothing about databases before I did it. I knew nothing about tea
Men are a minority (Score:2)
isn't it like 52% of americans are female? i vaguely remember that statistic from the ads for the Man Show.
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Like all political terms "minority" and "majority" really depend on context. The terms may have mathematical roots, but they aren't used in strictly mathematical terms. With gender the math gets really tricky because the numbers start virtually equal, and women's small advantage is mostly due to our science knowing how to keep them around a couple more years.
In the context of feminism, women are a minority because a lot of the issues facing them are more similar to the issues facing minorities those facing
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TL;dr:
Words mean whatever I want them to mean so that I'll win my argument.
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There's a conversation about Republicans between an Irishman and an American. The Irishman is talking about Socialists who don't go to Church (but swear they're Catholic), want to fire Queen Elizabeth, and sympathize with terrorists. The American is talking about Capitalists who go to an extremely Protestant Church for six hours a week, have a very poorly concealed crush on the Queen, and think that freedom doesn't apply to anyone the government has deemed a terrorist. Then an Aussie shows up, and he's talk
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Whose what is lying where?
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Why does one of them have to be lying? Are they supposed to be describing the same person? I'm sure all those demographics actually exist.
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Not minority enough for feminists. Men are biologically unnecessary. As soon as women can breed among themselves cheaply and easily, men will be finished.
I beg to differ sir. The human male IS a huge waste of resources in nature (like the male of nearly any species) precisely because they use food, water, and shelter without bearing replacement young for the species population.
The prevalence of species with males suggests their inclusion is a survival advantage, despite the draw on resources. Apparently, the genetic diversity we provide is just barely worth the trouble.
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We kill spiders.
I quite like spiders anyway, but... (Score:3)
*I* don't. I capture them alive and put them outside.
I took inspiration from the pharma industry; better to sell insulin than a cure for diabetes.
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Reference: "Why to sexes" by Vigen A. Geodakian (http://arxiv.org/pdf/cs/0408006)
The usefulness of many fertile males (with weak a weak Y chromosome) may be that they make the population adapt to changing environments faster. The males are the outlies, and natural selection of those make the population adapt more quickly, even when the males don't help with rearing the offspring.
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In the short term, perhaps. In the mid-to-long term women will by wiped out:
a) by accidents due to tripping over things on the floor on account of there being no shelves
and
b) by starvation due to food in jars being inaccessible.
Meh (Score:3)
Like anything else, social networking info is a possible source of useful info. As long as you understand the limitations.
I doubt that the average headhunter is good at evaluating much of anything, social networking or no. But that goes for the average {most professions} too ...
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You know the guy they exclude with this has posted a pimpin', guns, and money Selfey.
Use of social media for salary specifically? (Score:2)
My first instinct about the use of social media for job applicants has nothing to do with job performance, but feels more like a social background check -- is this person a "partier" or some kind of political "radical"?
My next thought is that maybe they use it as background for salary negotiations -- does this person have a big family/kids which would be expensive for insurance? Are they overextended financially and can be coerced into accepting a lower salary?
We are talking about recruiters here (Score:2)
So far I have only met one, with a background in psychology, who could determine anything at all.
Most recruiters are completely clueless. They don't know _anything_. They know nothing about the world outside of their bubble. They have no idea what the company needs. They have no idea what the slave wants. They just randomly match and mix.
Now add to that that usually only the bad companies outsource hiring (at least in Germany) and you will get bad employees matched with bad employers.
headhunters suck (Score:2)
I get contacted on linkedin a few times a month by recruiters. Half the time it is people who work for companies and actually want to talk to me. The other half it is third-party head-hunters, and what they want is for me to tell them anyone who may be interested: ie, they contact me, a stranger, and ask me to do their job for them. Of course, they usually offer a finder's fee of some sort, but if a recruiter/headhunter doesn't have his or her own bag of tricks, or even an hr professional subscription to
I solidly disagree (Score:2)
Recruiters aren't good at their purported job (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe it's just Sturgeon's Law, but most recruiters couldn't get a clue in a clue sanctuary while doused in clue scent.
You could take a typical recruiter, drop them in the middle of Facebook HQ, and tell them to find some PHP experts, and they'd come back with a janitor, two administrators, and a high school kid who was visiting.
You could give them the resumes of the top people in the world, mixed with some from recent San Quentin parolees, and they'd do no better than chance at picking the good ones.
Facebook may or may not be a way to judge potential employees. But even if it were, most recruiters couldn't do it.
Facebook worked... until it didn't (Score:2)
1) Back in the day when it was universities-only, "what happened on Facebook, stayed on Facebook". So students were candid on Facebook, making it useful to analyze their personalities.
2) Then Facebook opened up to the public, and (potential) employers could view (potential) employees' posts durung their university days. So many students used their privacy settings to hide the bad stuff, and were able to remain candid on Facebook.
3) Then (potential) employers started demanding Facebook passwords. People star
Recruiters can't even tell anything from a resume (Score:3)
This seems to be a common theme, but recruiters on LinkedIn, who have easy access to prefiltered data right from my own fingers, can't even manage to comprehend that.
My info: EE/CS, no interest in management, no interest in relocating from west coast.
Recruiter: Hey Sarusa, plz call me about this great ME (Mechanical Engineer) management opportunity in Madison, Wisconsin that just opened up.
I'm not making that one up. I wish I were. Ones that bad happen rarely, but weaker forms of that happen constantly.
They can't tell (Score:2)
They can't tell, but can they tell that they can't tell?
I'd wager several pounds that the answer is "no". http://www.xenodochy.org/ex/quotes/knowsnot.html [xenodochy.org]
Any company that snoops around my FB page... (Score:2)
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Is it antisocial behavior to not have any FB account at all?
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No, it means you're hip and "in" with the youth culture.
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Come to think of it, in my case it is. Antisocial with regard to the FB-crowd that I do not want to be associated with. Does that mean I cannot deal with younger colleagues? No, as long as they actually want to learn things and have some interest in their job, it will just work fine.
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What on Earth are you talking about? If you unfairly bias your hiring choices toward hiring women, that means it's unfairly harder for a man to get the job, i.e. it puts men at a disadvantage.
I suppose a don't-hire-any-black-people policy wouldn't disadvantage anyone, either?
Christ, do I really have to spell it out?
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It does if there are only two dollars in the whole world, and more than two people.
(I have never heard this saying and cannot fathom any sense from it)
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Are you on drugs or just generally low-intelligence? In a limited system giving something to somebody removes the same something collectively from everybody else. If you are pro-Nazi, it certainly damages everybody that is for freedom. And yes, that is an appropriate comparison for many factions of modern "feminism".
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This is the real question: How the hell do you know you're even looking up the right person at all? Why does their social / sexual / personal / family life have any bearing on how they conduct their professional life at all?
As such, I put more information about my life under my pseudonyms than I ever do under my full name on Facebook (which, generally, gets you a photo of me and nothing else, because I work in IT and know how to use the privacy controls).
Any employer that ever tells me they looked me up o
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Re:Bias against men (Score:5, Insightful)
And this is modded funny? Controversial, agreed, but funny?
The dominating strain of feminism doesn't give a #$%# about equality and non-discrimination in general. It's one-way only, men be damned. Sure, there's a lot more discrimination against females in general, but in cases where it works the other way around you'd expect those who constantly babble about "equal rights" to side with discriminated men, at least verbally. Not a chance.
Example from my country: in a divorce as a man you have practically zero chance for the kids to stay with you, even if the mother is absolutely unfit to care for them. Worse, your visiting hours tend to be minimal. How many females will you find in the group fighting for fathers' rights? Guess. "We want equal rights" - yeah, sure...
Yeah, fuck this form of feminism.
Re:Bias against men (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, fuck this form of feminism... but where the hell is it dominating? I mean, outside of right wing talk show fantasy world? I have never run into an actual person who holds this belief.
The real world still does have a way to go to get to actual gender equality. That includes figuring out how to get there or what it even means. And it will need to go both ways. I would wager the majority of feminists would agree with that.
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I have never met an actual person who holds this belief either, yet I've met, worked with and am friends with dozens of fathers who have been victims of it.
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I have never run into an actual person who holds this belief.
I have, many, many times over. It's extremely frustrating.
These are individuals who believe that somebody assigned the male gender at birth has some kind of fundamentally male "stuff," and somebody assigned the female gender at birth has some kind of fundamentally female "stuff." Then they go on and extrapolate from there into snips, snails, puppy dog tails, sugar, spice, and everything nice. For example, these individuals often bristle at the "dead-beat dad," but the concept of a dead-beat mom hasn't ev
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These people you describe don't sound like feminists to me. Your very first point about considering men inferior goes against the most fundamental tenant of feminism, on which the entire philosophy is based.
These people sound like your oppression fantasy opponents. Maybe they are real people you somehow found, maybe you just assumed some of hand comment implied all this stuff. Like most people I have never encountered anyone like that, outside of some crap daytime TV controversy show.
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I have never run into an actual person who holds this belief.
If you're a Mother, then you can count on the state providing for you: welfare, food stamps, subsidized housing, and garnishing the wages of the father. Nobody expects that you make $20-$30 per hour, say, to earn assistance. If you're a male who was tricked into impregnating a Mother, well, you better hope you make at least $30/hour, because anything less than that is being a "dead-beat."
This stems from the social norm that expects men to earn more than women. Attacking the problem at its roots seems the best way to achieve equality for both sides.
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Interesting points.
Is there a reason you're spelling it "womyn"?
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Heh, first time in my life someone referred to me as right wing! One more proof how simple right/left divides are useless in practice.
I have met feminists who freely express this view. We didn't talk much, of course - I'm male, so my opinion didn't matter to them. Yet, they are quite rare (although, like most extremists, very vocal).
The real problem I described is generally not visible in speech, publications, etc. It shows in actual actions. It is a (probably subconscious) bias in many active feminists, wh
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Right, because you certainly aren't hostile towards women you perceive as having a subconscious bias against you.
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If anything, he was apologizing for his subconscious biases, dude.
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It used to be that feminists also were concerned with "male liberation" as well. I see none of that now. And there are indeed a selection of strange extremist types that tend to poison the well. If you want to see some of the disturbing ideas out there just google "piv feminism". These people are so far from the goals of feminism that it should be regarded as deviant. But it isn't. I've experienced a little bit of it myself, but I tend to regard people who have this attitude as a waste of space, so not wort
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Unless Jeffery is a transgender, that doesn't really serve as a valid counterpoint to "guess how many females you will find in the group fighting for fathers' rights".
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The public, private, contractor web 2.0 tracking partnership is more a long term boondoggle over generations of contacted indicators.
Its now really a thought experiment between the NSA and GCHQ. Are people so honest with web 2.0 that the info they submit is NSA useful or will the older w
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The NSA isn't extrapolating solely from an FB account. They've got all kinds of other records. That's kinda why privacy advocates are pissed at them. Moreover they don't respond to one of their guys thinking "hey that shit look suspicious," by sending asking for a warrant to arrest you, they do it by sending their info to the FBI/DoJ where somebody who can interpret Facebook profiles can decide what to do. In other words even if the NSA guy has no idea when Arab pro-Palestinean rhetoric should scare him, an
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Nonsense. 18 months is perfectly normal if you actually want well-founded results. In fact, it is particularly fast. Even in engineering, you usually need a lot longer to conclusively falsify something. In the hard sciences, it can take decades.