Hiring?

mrsbowden

Hello all,
I have a few questions about collecting information on job applicants. I had a lady from a department tell/and/ask the following the other day, please give me your advice on these issues:

She was hiring for a position and decided to look all of the applicants up on the net. 1) is that legal? I am guessing it is as long as it was public information?

2) While looking she came across something that indicated that one of the potiental hires had been terminated from his last job. (how she found this or why it was posted on the net, who knows!) but never the less she began digging even more.

Evnetually she found an article stating this person was arrested for soliciation. 3) She printed the article, highlighted it and put a copy with his resume for the file.....NOW to me this all seems a bit too much and a boarder line legality issue? x:-/ HELP!

Don D

While I don't think it's illegal, since the 'information' was apparently published for the world to see, I think it is very poor practice. Lord only knows what the validity of the information is. How in the world could she 'look people up on the net? Since HR is the office of record for things like applications and resumes, I suggest you snatch that record at once and advise her that it will not be attached to or accompany the application/resume. I suggest you monitor this supervisor's practices closely. She seems to be a bit of a creative thinker and loose cannon. Don't let her reinvent HR practices at your place.

POPEYE

I agree 100%

mrsbowden

Okay another question from the same hiring supervisor. She says that people keep calling her and asking why they didn't get the position. She would like to give the a response but doesn't want to be rude of course. Is there anything to say without giving details or "Another candidate best fit our current needs"?

Whirlwind

I insist that hiring supervisors in my organization stay pretty generic: "We selected the person whose qualifications most closely matched those of the position." I realize that sometimes it's tempting to give applicants more detailed feedback, especially if you think they're pretty good but could just stand to tweak a couple of things. But we only do that for internal applicants. I figure that we owe our own employees career development, including meaningful feedback about why they weren't selected for a promotional position, but we don't career development to the general public.