Re: Hiring Practices

[Melonie Holliman <mrh -at- ABMDATA -dot- COM>]

Howdy, Yall:

Reading the posts on hiring practices got me thinking.
As a potential employer could search for an employee,
so could a potential employee search on an employer.

Now, that is a twist. Say you found the perfect
employee, but they rule you out as a boss because
you post to alt.depression or some such reason.
Not illegal (surely). However, is it immoral?
Unethical?

My first reaction is GREAT! I can find out what kind
of person I am going to work for. If I turn it around
and think someone would not like to work for me because
they did not like something about my personal situation,
however, I feel like someone just crawled in my underwear.

Also, potential employers: what if you found out the
candidate frequented a cancer support group? or a
diabetes support group? That could effect an employees
future performance.

Like every one of our hiring practices discussions, I
end up thinking "Why can't we just hire someone for
their skills and abilities rather than some other
extraneous criteria?" I would think that making a
practice of searching the net would only create bias
on the part of the employer. Most of us don't really
want to know that a potential employee is human.


Melonie Holliman
The Tech Writer
ABM Data Systems, Inc.
Austin, Texas

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