To: Virginia Flanders
From: HyunSeok Seo
Date: 27 July 2013
Subject: online researching on candidates
In answer to the recent hiring issue with Mimi Brewster, I’m addressing you with reasonable
solution to meet our goals that we should continue monitoring potential employee by using
search engines. Solutions will be included ethical ways of monitoring candidates. Searching
candidates on online is beneficial because it gives useful information regarding their public
status and history. However, while searching candidates, it could lead to violate candidate’s
privacy. The followings are the specific explanation and the reasonable solutions to meet our
goal that continue maintain reputation of Hathaway Jones and hire the best candidates for the
company.
Objectives
Our primary goal is maintaining good reputation of Hathaway Jones. Corporation is one of
profit-oriented organization that needs customer’s credibility. If potential employees defame
corporation’s value, corporation will not likely hire them. Nevertheless we should not just
judge potential employee based on their public status or irrelevant personal history (Age,
gender, race, sexual orientation, social status, etc.)
Hiring the best candidates for the corporation will be our secondary goal because it is
beneficial not only maintain good reputation, but also future of Hathaway Jones. Pertinent
information on prospective employee is important factor. For our corporation, we must
guarantee that the individual potential employees is in appropriate position with the public
and Hathaway Jones. Research should be done appropriately and policy should be firmly
designed.
Content of hiring process
While we achieving primary goal & secondary goal, we should not violate potential
employee’s privacy. To avoid a violating privacy, I firmly recommend that establish separate
research team and design research criteria for candidates. Research team member should not
be member who is in actual hiring process to eliminate bias on candidates. Though the
research criteria, researcher will spend certain amount of time to prevent excessive research
on candidates. The followings content will provide details of basic approach to using online
searches in hiring process.
Cross- functional Research team
Research team should have Cross-functional teams that group of people with
different functional expertise uses their knowledge toward a common goal. Team
member include expertise from human resource, security, and operation. Each
department member requires knowledge on the company’s history and vision. And all
researcher team members should have good standing that has credibility from other
employee. While research team member do the research on potential employees each
department member has different tasks.
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Human resource department member report research result to who is doing
actual hiring process
Operation department member limit researcher’s time on their task.
Security department member manage research result to prevent outflow data
and completely delete potential employee’s data once results are reported.
Cross functional research member will have no power as an interviewer or employee
who make actual decision to hire candidates. To operate cross functional research
team, team members should be a reliable employee and have no discrimination bias
with experience in the hiring process.
Researching Criteria
Before cross-functional research team starts research, all researcher should be given
information on the certain position we are hiring for and list of criteria on what
researcher should record while they are researching. Criteria should contain
inappropriate photos, inappropriate videos, employee history, educational status, and
Facebook if it is useable. Also any other criteria should be included based on their
specific position. For instance, if the potential employee is applied for a position
involving money, we should check their credit background additionally. If researcher
found important information based on criteria, it should be recorded or attached to
the report. While negative information is critical for actual hiring person. All relevant
information will be founded and recorded, and irrelevant information will be deleted
Limiting researching time
Not to violate the privacy’s potential employee, we limit researching time on one
potential employee. Cross functional research team will have 30 minutes to research
potential employee on criteria. Excessive research on certain employee will raise
issue of invading privacy. By limiting researching time, researcher will not have
enough time to research on irrelevant information.
Risk & How to prevent the risk
Since candidates put any information on online, there will risks exist in researching such as
finding irrelevant information about candidates, chasing away the good standing candidates,
and hiring inappropriate candidates. Because of those risks, researching on candidates should
be done carefully. While having an interview with candidates, we are giving chance to
candidates that explain about their irrelevant information.
Even more, there will be possibility that invade potential employee’s privacy because we
proceed research without given notification. To prevent those risks, we should give
notification before candidates submit the application that there will possibilities of being
searched their personal information on the internet. By informing notification, candidates will
not have a miscommunication with Hathaway Jones and people who submitting application
will understand company’s policy before they submit the application. Since we are
researching on candidates who passed the document examination, our cost will be minimal
for searching on potential employee.
Hathaway Jones must keep a good reputation in the eye of the public. In order to have good
reputation, we hire potential employee who will also keep our good reputation. Information
that influences our company is necessary to notice before hiring. I address we should keep
researching on potential employees with cross functional research team. And research criteria
will be assigned to researcher that what should be considered and what to record. This
process will not invade privacy and beneficial on hiring more talented employee for
Hathaway Jones. I urge you to incredible benefit of this process, and please Contact me if you
have any question or suggestions.