FACEBOOK SCREENING CAN BE RISKY BUSINESS

These days, it’s common for an employer to scour job candidates’ social media before hiring. But John Arnold, Trulaske assistant professor of management, and his colleagues wanted to know if that screening actually predicted job performance. His work, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, looked both at what sort of information was on job seekers’ Facebook pages and whether it influenced recruiters. For starters, Arnold found that a person’s online photos and posts are not indicative of future success. What’s more, by delving into those private lives, companies might be taking a risk. “There’s a lot of personal information — age, religion, marital status and ethnicity — that recruiters wouldn’t be allowed to ask about during a selection process,” Arnold says. “It tells a cautionary tale because it could put organizations in a legally tenuous situation, and all evidence suggests that it’s not a valid practice.”