We Googled You

He earmarked millions of dollars to open new stores in the largest cities, including Beijing and Guangzhou, with the flagship in Shanghai, China’s wealthiest and most cosmopolitan city. Fred received a phone call from his old roommate, John Brewster. The two spent a few minutes catching up on the phone, and then John eased the conversation around to his daughter, Mimi.

John then explained his daughter’s interest in the company, and how she wanted to be apart of the move to China. Fred then agrees to meet with Mimi Brewster to see whether or not she would fit the job. Mimi is quite fit for the job as she had grown up in China, and she spoke both Mandarin and a local dialect. Mimi attended Berkeley University, where she had majored in modern Chinese history and graduated cum laude. Right out of university, Mimi accepted a position at a management consultancy firm where she got the broad business exposure she wanted.

She also graduated at Stanford with a MBA degree. After graduating from Stanford, Mimi was recruited by Eleanor Gaston, the largest clothing, shoes, and accessories Company in the United States. Now, with two successful brand re-launches behind her, she was looking for some general management experience, preferably in a fast growing market like China. Mimi was described by employers to be aggressively creative, unique, opinionated and a risk taker. Fred knew that the company’s image was getting old fast and thought Mimi would bring in something new to the company.

He was really impressed by Mimi’s interview and thought Mimi was a good choice. Mimi was very confident she would win over Fred during the interview and become a new player at Hathaway Jones’ team. The vice president of human resources, Virginia Flanders, is a lifer at Hathaway Jones, and has not yet been invited into Fred’s inner circle. Virginia is like Fred’s ‘sixth sense’ she thought about who were the right people to bring on board for the company. Virginia considered Mimi to be a bit brash for Hathaway Jones.

She then proceeded to do her routine Google search on Mimi. Virginia’s practice was to scan the first eleven pages of Google results. On page nine, she saw something that might cause concern – Virginia found that when Mimi graduated from Barkley she had been the leader of a nonviolent, but vocal protest group that helped mobilize campaigns against the World Trade Organization (WTO). Virginia then takes her findings to Fred and explains to him that Mimi could be the kind of person who could get the company into trouble in China.

Fred then faces the hard decision whether or not to hire Mimi. Discussion In class we had a discussion on the case study, ‘We Goggled You’ by Diane Coutu. Together we conversed about if it was legal for the HR department to do a background check on potential candidates by doing a Google search. To Google or not to Google – that is the question. We said yes, it is legal to do a background search on Google. Google is a public technology device used to find information about absolutely anything, including people.

HR professionals and managers progressively use search engines and social networking sites, such as MySpace or even Facebook to dig past the typical resume and cover letter that people produce. A number of the ‘red flags’ expose web postings by the candidates themselves – web postings that the person obviously don’t expect job recruiters or interviewers ever to see (Employment background check guidelines). It is your own fault if something unacceptable gets leaked out – you should be able to take responsibility for your own actions. Your online identity is what the results say about you.

In North America, Europe and Asia, just under three quarters of employers use information about candidates they find online in their hiring decisions. Your online identity is a critical part of the hiring process. According to Career By Choice, up to 85% of recruiters and hiring managers Google potential candidates as a part of the background check and up to 70% of them have used this online information they have found to determine that the candidate was no longer suitable for the job (Expat & International Careers). Information found over the Internet should effect hiring decisions.

We think that it depends on the situation, if it doesn’t effect the job then you should hire the person, and if it does effect the job, simply don’t hire them. Unfortunately, “Internet postings are like tattoos that never go away” because, what ever goes onto the Internet cannot be erased. You might have the chance to remove the information, but there is always the risk that someone has already seen it, saved it, reposted it, and you would never know. This ‘digital dirt’ will inevitably be found by anyone doing background checks for anything (Expat & International Careers).

It is only ethical that Fred and Virginia inform Mimi of the information they found on Google. The best way to deal with this situation is to bring it to the person’s attention giving them the opportunity to confirm or deny the information. They should give her a chance to explain her side of the story and to listen to why she believed in protesting against the World Trade Organization. Virginia is playing the HR manager role quite well; she is clearly looking out for her company. She did the right thing by telling Fred about the Google results she found.

There is no way Fred and Virginia can refuse Mimi her position without facing legal implications because; she is fully qualified for the job and she’s one of their best candidates. They would not be able to give her a straight explanation without Mimi questioning them. They cannot deny her the job without confronting Mimi. We think that the fact that Mimi is applying for a job in China (in contrast to the Western World) contributes to the hiring decision majorly. If Mimi were applying to work in the Western world there would be no doubt about hiring her.

Mimi is a brilliant, confident and creative young woman. She was fresh out of university when she was the leader of the protesting group that was at least seven years ago – everyone has a past. The Western world tends to have a more ‘forgive and forget’ mentality whereas the Chinese are very conservative and traditional – they don’t want anything substandard associated with them. To improve the situation, Mimi can warn Fred about the search results that come up on Google and explain him the whole story behind it. Mimi is a really strong and confident for the job so they should listen to her side of the story.

The main question asked about this case study was: should Fred hire Mimi despite her online history? We think Mimi’s online history may cause a concern for Hathaway Jones when expanding to China; Fred shouldn’t hire Mimi given her online history. The Chinese are very conservative and traditional. Fred may forgive Mimi and forget about her past, but the Chinese might not, and that’s not a risk the company should be willing to take. The new trend in hiring standards will have to change, or you just won’t be able to hire great people like Mimi when sending them abroad.

That might be hard for CEOs nd HR executives to understand. Chinese people are very technology oriented, they more than know how to use Google, which probably won’t help her situation. This case illustrates the importance for its potential employees, particularly young adults who occupy a great deal of their time engaging on the Internet. To protect their reputations people should think twice before they post information about themselves or others on the Internet. Information posted online today will still be available worldwide years from now. The Internet can either be a very useful device, but it can also be a very harmful one.