Recruitment in the 21st century

For most of my life I have engaged in activities that should a future employer look at would exclude me from any job, yet I am a very successful businessman with a absolute belief in personal and business integrity.

With all the information that people today put up about themselves and others put up for them on social networking sites how are businesses going to establish a persons suitability for job positions.

This is the challenge for the recruitment industry that they seem to be completelyч unaware of and fromч discussionsч I have had, are yet to even understand there is a problem here at all.

We are talking about businesses that use LinkedIn, Facebook and Google to check perspectiveч employeesч behaviors, and hereч is where the problem lies.

You see if everyone knew about my Rock n Roll lifestyle, the gigs the girls, the drugsч ex cetera, who the hell would hire me.

But should personal lifestyleч choices ч be a way of selecting or excludingч peopleч for jobs, in fact the skills I learnt forming bands, arranging tours for them around the country, dealing withч bastardч venue owners, getting money from ч people who didn"t want to pay, arranging record company deals etc was in fact my MBA.

This experience led me to develop my own businesses and to experience both success and failure and the knowledge that goes with both. I am happy to tell people about my failures as life is a journey with many twists but that is not the same as someone posting a photo of me in aч compromisingч position.

Information taken out of context or presented with bias is not the same as someone sharing their experiences with you. One is information offered with trust and and controlled buy theч personч sharing it, the other isч voyeurism, and they are in no way the same thing.

Which brings me back to theч dilemma that is social media, how should ourч opinions,ч beliefs andч behaviors be viewed and whoч determines theirч authenticity.

Who I was and how I behaved was all part of who I am today and if myч behavior was observed in micro slices at any particular point in my richly experienced past would that actually tell anyone who I was or far more importantly who I have become.

I see a grave danger ofч business"s going down the route of using social media as some sort of litmus test for suitability of candidates and my gravest fear is that no one is telling young people they will in the future be judged on their behaviorч in the past.

Thats the point of being young and experimenting with life we should not judge people on their pastч behavior as growing up often means doing stupid things, and if in the future people are forced to behave inч certainч ways soч asч to make sure they are employableч then we will have managed to wring out the last bit ofч individuality that education hasn"t destroyed

Nick Rowney

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