OK, that’s my title for the article; it’s not the title of the article published by MarketWatch and blogged about by Mashable.
Go ahead check out both of these articles. There’s one specific thing I’d like you to focus on. It’s the statistic that says that 35% of employers discounted a candidate who bad-mouthed their previous employer, co-workers or clients.
Mashable Link – http://mashable.com/2009/08/19/social-media-screening/
MarketWatch Link – http://www.marketwatch.com/story/forty-five-percent-of-employers-use-social-networking-sites-to-research-job-candidates-careerbuilder-survey-finds-2009-08-19?siteid=nbsh
The MarketWatch article gives good advice for cleaning up your public profile. The other 6 reasons that employers rule out a candidate have a lot of validity to them as they could create serious workplace problems. I recommend you heed the advice in MarketWatch, but I’m not happy that you are being pressured with fear to subdue your freedom of speech. Why can’t employees speak freely about a previous employer? Mind you, not everyone speaks freely in a respectful way. It would be better to state facts instead of make judgments (i.e. “I was promised a raise in 6 months and did not receive it even after 12 months had passed” vs. “they are liars and cheats.”) But it sounds like we can’t even state facts. 
If employer’s offered a truly great place to work, this wouldn’t be an issue. And because we are silenced out of fear of not being able to be gainfully employed (critical in this economy where options are still slim), that means that we have no way to communicate poor environments to others. The employer can check us out to make sure we are a good fit, but we have no means of being able to check out the employer to see if it is a good fit for us. We can’t check the employer’s history and reputation with other employees if we all become afraid and silenced. It also means that poor work environments will continue in perpetuity instead of being pressured to be fixed.
Employers need negative feedback the same as businesses need negative feedback from customers. If you don’t know what upsets people, then how can you improve?
It’s not like anyone tells the truth on an exit interview. Anyone who is remotely politically savvy knows that you tell Human Resources one of three things:
1. I’m moving out of the area
2. I’m leaving for more opportunity
3. I’m leaving for more money
These are the socially acceptable reasons to leave an employer. But the truth is, that’s what we are going to, it is not what we are leaving. If employer’s were to let people speak freely on social sites, they’d be able to use the research for themselves to find out why turnover is high, why morale is down, and why there is a lack of employee engagement.
Go ahead employers, silence us out of fear. You are only hurting yourself. We’ll shut up and get the job. And if we find the environment dumps more garbage on us than we bargained for, then we’ll leave. And you’ll be left scratching your head trying to figure out what the problem is. If you hadn’t used fear to silence us, you’d know.
