 |
In Isaac Asimov’s famous short story The Dead Past, the government keeps a new discovery — a time machine — under wraps. Eventually, a crusader against such suppression of knowledge discovers the details and broadcasts them to the public. It is only then that he discovers the consequences. People do not use the time machine to visit the distant past. Rather, they use it for prying on their spouses, their friends, their neighbours — during their most intimate moments. It is the end of privacy.
You don’t need a time machine to create such a situation. The Internet generation is doing it by itself. On social networking sites such as Orkut, Facebook or Livejournal, members are baring all. Whether it’s nude pictures of their own or their innermost thoughts, everything is hung up for the world to see. The assumption is that these are private corners where only the closest friends are allowed in. The truth is that any tech-savvy person can get in without blinking twice. Worse, you can’t just erase or destroy the stuff like you would a photograph or diary. Somewhere, a record remains.
It may not matter in your social life. If everybody has posted details of their first fling, you won’t be regarded as the King Rat if you do the same. But it could be a different issue altogether when it comes to the professional arena.
What will happen when Generation Exhibitionist gets serious about a job? HR managers say there are serious shocks that they will face. It doesn’t matter now when they are still in college or are holding junior jobs. When it comes to more responsible positions, the scrutiny will be more intense.
It has started happening. According to a report from business social network Viadeo, one in five employers finds information about a candidate on the Internet. Nearly 60 per cent say that it influences their hiring decisions. More importantly, a fourth had rejected candidates depending on what they had found on the Net.
“Today, people do expensive background checks,” says Mumbai-based HR consultant Shashi Rao. “They hire companies such as Hill & Associates (India), Globe, Kroll, ChoicePoint and Intelysis to do the job for them. Tomorrow, they will first scan the Net and reject half the applications. And you won’t even know why.”
Pre-employment screenings are big business in India today. According to industry estimates, they have jumped to nearly 40,000-50,000 a month. The screenings are more prevalent in areas such as information technology and business process outsourcing (BPO), where attrition rates are high and reputations matter much more. A number of recent reports on data pilferage at BPO units have made companies here particularly sensitive. Industry body Nasscom is even talking about a blacklist and organised screening.
The problem is not so much if you have been cutting corners; you can’t expect to get away with it in a fishbowl world. But should youthful indiscretions come home to haunt you later? “I know of an instance when a candidate didn’t get an offer because the recruiter found a picture of his on the Net in which he was totally sloshed,” says Rao.
“The rise of search engines such as Google means that potential employers are never more than a few clicks away from information about you,” says Viadeo, the network that conducted the earlier-mentioned survey.
Rao adds a caveat, however. “You can’t really control what others put up about you,” she says. “Potential employers will take that with a pinch of salt. What matters more is what you put up about yourself.”
Her final warning: “Don’t post your nude picture on the Net unless you are planning a career as a striptease artiste.”
THE NETWORKING WEB
A partial list of social networking sites
| Name | Focus | Number of users |
| Bebo | Schools and colleges | 34,000,000 |
| Classmates.com | Schools, colleges, work | 40,000,000 |
| General | 34,000,000 | |
| Friendster | General | 47,000,000 |
| hi5 | General | 50,000,000 |
| Business | 12,000,000 | |
| LiveJournal | Blogging | 12,900,000 |
| MySpace | General | 192,000,000 |
| Netlog | Formerly known as Facebox | 22,482,536 |
| Orkut | Owned by Google | 57,431,788 |
| Reunion.com | Locating friends and family | 28,000,000 |
| Stumbleupon | Websurfing | 3,150,000 |
| Windows Live Spaces | Formerly MSN Spaces | 120,000,000 |
| Xanga | Blogs and “metro” areas | 40,000,000 |
| Business | 2,000,000 |
Source: Wikipedia