Snyder 1

Danielle Snyder
Dr. Kurlinkus
ENGL 3183
9 April 2015
Annotated Bibliography
The present younger generation enters the workforce nowadays with a new set of
qualifications needed for it entirely, especially regarding their digital presence. I am looking into
the impact of social media upon this new generations qualifications within the job market,
moreover, to what extent do employers examine job applicants digital presence on social media
and what conclusions do they subsequently draw. By being selected to write a chapter in your
collection Strange but Simple: The Rhetoric of the Everyday Technological Change, I am able to
continue exploring the relationship of how social media became integrated into the application
process for employment opportunities. For example, I hope to examine the impact of having a
limited or nonexistent social media history upon a job opportunities, as well as employers
general opinions upon their general expectations of an applicants digital presence. This issue
holds relevance in todays society by its nearly universal impact. Is there a difference in how
employers look at younger applicants as opposed to older applicants? How deeply do employers
look into an applicants social media presence? Are there specific sites they look to, or do they
look into every single facet of an applicants online presence? To figure out the answers to these
questions, I am conducting interviews with employers as well as prospective employees
regarding their views and opinions on this matter, which will shed light on the question on we all
want to be answered: How does social media affect me in the job market?

Abril, Patricia Sanchez, Avner Levin, and Alissa Del Riego. Blurred Boundaries: Social Media
Privacy and the Twenty-First-Century Employee. American Business Law Journal 49.1
(2012): 63-124. Web. 8 April 2015.
This article is extremely useful to my argument of the effects of social media upon hiring.
It focuses on the blurred spheres of the private and the public when it comes to social media in
the workplace. Essentially, it questions how closely employers should look at their employees
or applicants social media accounts. The companies, after all, do need to protect their
reputations, so any negative posts regarding business is up for review, but as for other topics,
where do they draw the line? The article says this is a relatively recent problem; in the past,
ones personal life was easy to keep separate from ones work life. However, social media
crosses this boundary of public and private, and it creates a conundrum. Take everything
personal off your social media that you dont want your employers to see? Or leave it on and
expect them to be understanding of your private life? Its a thin line, and this article examines it
quite closely. Im definitely going to use this in my research; the blurring of public and private is
a tricky subject. Plus, this article has statistics regarding the viewing of social media upon
making a hiring decision; approximately 45% of employers have looked up possible applicants

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on social media. It digs into the essence of my research, showing the amount of influence that the
internet has over what used to be a human-to-human interaction. Instead, now loads of
information can be found about applicants prior to their very first handshake. Here are some
quotes:
Aside from monitoring for productivity, security, and performance, firms have a vested interest
in learning about their present and future employees moral constitution and personality traits
that may affect on-the-job duties. Failure to unover an obvious flawcould lead to negligent
hiring and negligent retention lawsuitshaving serious business repercussions.
These boundry-crossing technologies blur the already elusive line between the private and the
public, the home and the workplace. Private information that was previously segregated now
becomes easily accessible to employersamong other perhaps unintended audiencesThis
openness has far-reaching effects on personal privacy, reputation, and self-expression.

Brown, Victoria R. and E. Daly Vaughn. The Writing on the (Facebook) Wall: The Use of
Social Networking Sites in Hiring Decisions. Journal of Business Psychology 26
(2011):219-225. Web. 8 April 2015.
This article also questions the legality of the viewing of social media sites to make hiring
decisions, moreover, putting out the idea that there might be possible misuse or discrimination
happening because of it. A survey conducted in 2009 asked employers if they research applicants
using social media and a reported 45% said yes; this is compared to when a survey in 2008
conducted the same experiment in which 22% of employers said they researched candidates.
Obviously, this trend is rising; those surveys account for a 23% jump in just a year. Moreover,
the article cites another survey taken in 2009 where 35% of employers admitted to not hiring an
applicant based on their social media presence, the reasons ranging from inappropriate photos to
alcohol and drug use to the display of poor communication skills. However, this subject also
brings in the problem of misuse of social networking sites. For instance, employers searching
into their applicants social media sites could be seen as a violation of privacy, or on the flip side,
employers could be deceived by the faade an applicant puts up on social media sites merely to
impress others and hide their inadequacies. The lack of standardization in this process is truly a
problem, because, unlike a background check, the standards from employer to employer may
vary. And in addition to that, even on an applicant-by-applicant basis, the process can vary. If an
employer simply misunderstands a single post or picture on a social networking site, they could
be unknowingly discriminating that applicant from the hiring pool based on their own subjective
assumptions. Or they could be discriminating applicants entirely knowing so; social media lists
pieces of information that arent found on job applications, such as sexual orientations,
nationality, and age, which employers can easily use to eliminate them from the process without
giving any specific reason. It isnt concrete information that one gains by researching an
applicant on social media; its a predictor. Nothing about the process is entirely definitive. This
article will be especially helpful in my research, and I want to cast my own net and see how
many employers use social media to screen applicants and compare them to these statistics. I also

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want to include questions perhaps if the employers themselves consider this a fair process. Here
are some key quotes:
Employers are not currently required to disclose what information on a SNS was used in
making screening decisions, which may allow managers to discriminate against candidates. In
fact, through an online search it is often possible for employers to discreetly identify information
related to protected group status as covered by all major federal employment discrimination
laws.
Researchers should also address personal aspects beyond personality that may be inferred from
an evaluation of an individuals SNS profile. For example, hiring managers could presume to
know other information about an applicant, such as an applicants values or how the individual
might fit with an organization.

Elefant, Carolyn. The Power of Social Media: Legal Issues & Best Practices for Utilities
Engaging Social Media. Energy Law Journal 32.1 (2011):1-56. Web. 8 April 2015.
Elefant starts her article off by proclaiming the importance of social media, an essential
tool for companies to market and communicate with their customers. It is cheap and interactive,
and better yet, information can be conveyed directly to the public. However, the point is made
that social media hiring might be discriminatory based on the diversity of the social media site,
an angle I havent yet heard about in my research. Say a company is hiring purely through
LinkedIn; the chances for hiring minorities are significantly lower due to a lower representation
of them on this specific social networking site. For instance, just 5% of LinkedIn members are
African-American compared to the 12.8% of the American population; chances are, the winning
applicant will most likely not be a minority. In addition, for advertising on Facebook, Facebook
allows employers to target a specific demographic, which I feel can be especially discriminatory.
Simply, by plugging in a race or age range or position level, employers can selectively advertise
to the candidates they want. Is this fair? Moreover, this article also emphasizes the subjective
judgments and possible discrimination that may be occurring due to researching applicants on
social media. To what extent does an employer care about the lifestyle of an employee? Does it
necessarily have to match what they have in mind? This seems like a negative view, seeing as
much diversity comes from the unexpected, and it brings new ideas in along the way. Elefant, in
this article, advises the solution of informing applicants that an employer will be looking at their
social media beforehand to avoid the stereotype of sneaking around, which I feel like helps the
situation from coming off as a secret investigation to something merely required for the
application process. I definitely like her solution here, and this will lead me to ask if employers
let their applicants know beforehand that their social media accounts will be examined.
Moreover, this article has increased my knowledge of social media researching; its appearing to
be much more common than I expected it to be. Here are a couple key quotes:
For example, companies that wish to check applicants social media presences should stick to
researching applicants skills or background relevant to the positions for which they have

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appliedBy contrast, a hiring manager who checks a social media site merely to satisfy
curiosity about an applicants race or marital status could open the company to liability.
Utilities that hire an unfit employeemay be liable for negligent hiring if they knew, or with
proper screening, should have discovered the lack of fitness before extending a job offerYet, a
utilitys interest in avoiding negligent hiring claims does not extend carte blanche to comb
through applicants blogs, Facebook pages, and Twitter feeds for personal information.

Garling, Caleb. Didnt get that new job? You need a better Facebook score. Wired.com.
Business, 21 November 2011. Web. 8 April 2015.
This Wired article really surprised me in a big way. Essentially, it talked about how there
is a company named Reppify that employers can now use to track and look at a job applicants
overall social media presence. After the company picks its way through the applicants presence
online, meanwhile going through all the data on LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. it can find without
being in your friend category, it calculates a score to the hiring employers, rating the applicant
for their online content. Subsequently, employers can easily peruse through employee
applications, browsing through them as if they were SAT scores. The only somewhat security
that the company provides to the applicant through this process is that it sends an email to the
applicant in question, informing them of the mass-media search, and gives them the choice of
either providing more personal information to improve their score or shutting down the process
entirely by blocking all public viewing of their profiles. This, I feel, would send a very negative
message to employers, although the applicant would see it as a protection of privacy. So where
does this line of privacy extend to? The article makes the point that employers looking at
applicant profiles is fine, but bringing in a third party complicates the issue. Reppify is basically
a company that snoops on you as much as it possibly can without technically breaking the law,
but what right does it have to score an applicant on their social media presence? What are its
criteria? To me, this company doesnt seem to have the authority to do this, but Id like to look
into it more. This article especially helps me understand an employers mindset, which I want to
understand. Yes, you want social media competent employees, but where is the line of privacy
drawn in the process? Where does looking into an applicants qualifications turn into downright
snooping into their personal life? I actually think Im going to include a question in my
interviews to see if employers use methods such as these third party snooping/research
companies. Here are some key quotes from the article:
But for job seekers, it could be a disturbing thought not only because theyre being judged
by a web application, but because the service is pooling information about them from so many
different sources. In a conversation with Wired, Reppify CEO Chirag Nangia downplayed the
importance of the metrics, saying he sees this data as only part of the hiring process.
What if your Klout score that controversial measure of your influence on social networks
determined whether you got a job? What if hiring managers combed through online data
metrics trying to determine your work ethic? What if you needed a certain score on the job
market equivalent of your SATs to even be considered for a new position?

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Joos, John G. Social media: New frontiers in hiring and recruiting. Employment Relations
Today 35 (2008): 51-59. Web. 8 April 2015.
This is an interesting article, particularly because it wasnt necessarily what I expected to
find in this topics area. Jooss article focused on how businesses and companies nowadays
target to the younger generation via social media, as in their recruiting and hiring processes.
More surprisingly, at least to me, was how they specifically target the Generation Y, or rather,
the new up and coming generation that has grown up with technology, through a variety of
methods of social media. Employers now utilize methods from podcasting to blogging to wikis
to even texting to draw and communicate with more applicants in the younger generation or
those freshly out of college. Additionally, the article encourages applicants to embrace social
media to market themselves to employers as well; for example, by having a personal blog with
their credentials so employers can see their writing style as well as work experience. Its in this
second part that relates to my research the most, but the aspect of employers using social media
to lure new talent in intrigues me; this idea hadnt occurred to me before, but I might include it in
my research as the flip side of how social media is used in hiring new employees for a company,
since traditionally we associate the impact of social media to stem from the applicant to
employer rather than vice versa. Some quotes that I might use in my research are:
Members of Generation Y, who are the college graduates of 2002 and beyond, have been
steeped in a fast-response culture. High-speed Internet connections, communicating by textmessage in real-time, cellphones, and social media Web sites have all had a strong influence on
this generation.
The Internet profoundly affects how business is conducted in the world today, and recruiting
and hiring processes are being swept along in its current. The Internet lends itself well to finding
college graduates, skilled workers, managers, and executives. These groups tend to be computer
literate, and technology use is an integral part of their daily routines, helping them develop and
maintain connections at work as well as in their personal lives.