Observe and report

In the business writing class I teach, I conduct mock interviews with students. To prepare them adequately, I ask questions that take three forms:

• “Normal” (“Where do you see yourself in five years?”)
• Inappropriate (“Do you have children?”)
• Kooky (“If you were a tree, what tree would you be?”)

Now there’s a new screwy question they have to consider:  “What is your Facebook password?”

It is a disturbing trend on the job interview circuit.

Businesses want it for two reasons:

1. To make sure the candidate doesn’t do anything in his private life that may embarrass the company or affect work productivity.
2. To get to know the candidate better to see if she would be a good fit with the rest of the employees.

Regardless of the reason, it is a bad idea for candidates because it (obviously) could cost the person the job. If the person does get the job, the interviewer could still have some preconceived notions that would affect how he or she treats the new hire.

No one would ever get a job if potential employers had an all-access pass into a candidate’s personal life. As Orin Kerr, a George Washington University law professor, puts it in the above linked article, “It’s akin to requiring someone’s house keys.”

I can’t imagine what someone would say about the books on the shelves in my house, for example. Meteorology textbooks, scholarly journals, qualitative research books make me look educated. Travel books show I’m globally minded. David Sedaris, Tom Wolfe, D.H. Lawrence, Flannery O’Connor — I think I’m still OK.

And then things go downhill. What does “The Modern Witch’s Spellbook” say about me? Or “Linda Goodman’s Love Signs?” Must I explain that I went through “a phase” in high school and don’t like to get rid of books?

Some might say not to put anything on your Facebook profile you don’t want the world to see. They have a point, and I do that to a certain extent, but I still want to have interesting, unvarnished interactions with my friends and family. So I just monitor my privacy settings.

Even with that, I can’t control some things. My friend Julia (of the New Orleans extravaganza) took a trip down memory lane on Facebook with embarrassing results for me.

She posted pages of the diary I kept for us during our ninth grade trip with my parents to Myrtle Beach.

I’m mortified.

I take pains to make sure my FB life and work life are separate. What would my current employer (or future ones) say about “prose” like this?

Shudder.

“Eyelashes” was the nickname we gave to the T-shirt shop employee we thought was hot. And here’s a picture of what I thought was hot back then:

Shudder, again.

Yes, that’s a Polaroid. Yes, I’m suitably humiliated. So I guess I was wrong in my last post. I do have shame. I didn’t even tag myself in her posts.

So I say “nay” to businesses asking for snooping rights into Facebook. A business that asks for entrance is not the kind of business I’d want to work for anyway.

Mashable has some tips in case you find yourself in that situation.

And please don’t judge me too harshly. Puberty is a bitch.