Facebook friends as job references?

Eve Tahmincioglu • Profile • E-mail

Time was you could control the references a prospective employer contacted because you provided them with a well-thought out list of colleagues and former bosses you knew would provide glowing recommendations.

But with the proliferation of social networking sites loaded with lists of your contacts, and your contacts’ contacts, it’s like the Wild West of references for job seekers. You never know whom a hiring manager may end up talking to about you.

Almost every human resource professional I talk to lately admits to using these social networking sites to check out applicants, beyond just public profiles and resumes. In many cases, if an HR person shares a job seeker’s connection on a networking site, they’ll just e-mail that contact to find out the dirt on the applicant without permission from the applicant.

The thinking is, there’s nothing illegal or unethical about it because you’re flaunting your connections in the public domain.

So it’s time to think long and hard about the many friends and contacts you now have on your social networking pages. Just because someone is on your list of friends on Facebook doesn’t necessarily mean you want that individual as your reference for a job.

“The old days of a page with three references and three phone numbers on it that you controlled are over,” says Jennifer L. Berman, an HR attorney with consulting firm CBIZ in Chicago. “With these networking sites, you’ve opened up your rolodex for the whole world to see.”

Cybersleuthing
Indeed, Sergio Alvarez, executive vice president of Internet sales for Internet advertising firm Ambassador Media Group, recently used LinkedIn to get the skinny on a candidate he was considering hiring.

“This sales person was on LinkedIn and he had a contact on there from one of our competitors. Since everyone knows everyone in this industry, we contacted someone there directly,” he explains.

The job applicant had no idea Alvarez was doing the stealthy online reference check, but it worked out well for the candidate because he got a positive recommendation and the job.

If you don’t want prospective employers calling certain people on your friends’ list, you could list those individuals on a private list, which many sites now offer. But that sort of defeats the  purpose of these sites: networking.

Many of these networking sites now include functions allowing contacts to include written recommendations or you're-a-great-person labels. LinkedIn literally has an icon of a thumb pointing up to signify a friend or associate has recommended a contact.

On Jobster.com, there’s a section where you can ask your colleagues to send you a letter of recommendation.

Here’s the canned e-mail you can send out: Would you write a brief recommendation of my work that I can include on my Jobster profile?

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