Incompetent HR Departments and Facebook

Another day and another story about how horrible it is that employers are requiring prospective employees to hand over Facebook passwords. I say that everybody is looking at this issue the wrong way. The real issue is what employers have human resource departments that are so full of fail that they are setting them up for a major lawsuit?

 An employer may not ask about my religion, age, marital status, organizations I belong to and several other protected classes during an interview -- it is illegal. By looking at my Facebook page today (which is set to the most private setting Facebook allows) they will see pictures at some recent events I have attended and comments I have made. Just from there they will know if I am married, of a certain age, whether I have children and what my religion is (they will also see I'm a Mets fan, which some would argue should also be a protected class). From this they may surmise I wouldn't work on certain days due to my religion or parental obligations,  I wouldn't want to travel extensively or wouldn't want to work 36 hour days (lawyer joke -- if you ever worked at a big Manhattan firm you'd get it).

And this was just my page. We have married gay friends and family whose marital status is noted on their page. Pregnant friends and family who share the news on their page. Older friends and family who note that they are moving along in life on their pages. By looking at their pages, their prospective employers will have just found out information that they are not allowed to ask.

Now, if I, or any of the people I mentioned above weren't hired we could potentially turn around and file a claim with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against them because, by looking at our Facebook pages and obtaining information they are not allowed to ask, they have just opened themselves up to claims of discrimination (religion, age, politics, pregnancy). Pretty dumb on the employers part. 

You want to Google me? Fine. You may or may not find this blog (one of the pluses of having a common name) and I don't post anything here that you couldn't find out anyway -- and truthfully, probably the same for my Facebook page as pretty much anything I have on there I'm not really hiding. But, my Facebook page is rather lame and tame these days --  posts aren't of drinking binges and doing illegal things, they revolve around normal, mundane things that people my age and in my position in life tend to do. Professionally, my LinkedIn page is a better barometer of how I will be as an employee.

But hey, if being lazy and demanding my Facebook password to know my religion and what political organizations I may belong to are so important, my lawyer (my wife) is standing by. Bring it on.