Cybervetting,Online Information,and Personnel Selection

Abstract

This study examines employers’ and workers’ sensemaking about cybervetting—employers’ use of online information for personnel selection. Analysis of 89 employer and applicant interviews suggest a shift in the social contract—the implicit expectations for how personnel selection and employment relationships should work. Results suggest an extension of new proactive transparency expectations from organizations to workers, the implicit acceptance of which points to the emergence of a digital social contract. The digital social contract prescribes normative expectations for workers’ digital visibility, thereby extending the times and contexts within which employment evaluations and career management occur. Using a communicative perspective to address research gaps on everyday ethics, practices, and technologies of personnel selection, contributions include introducing and explicating the digital social contract, documenting the extension of new transparency expectations to individuals, and explicating ethical and practical implications of new technologies and information visibility on contemporary personnel selection.

Keywords

cybervetting online screening transparency personnel selection social contract social media ethics information communication technologies career development

Personal information continues to increase in visibility. Not only are public records available online, people routinely communicate information about themselves and others via websites, blogs, and social network sites (Pew Research Center, 2012). Although status updates, tweets, and pins are typically a few sentences, characters, or photos, the amount of information millions of users produce and make visible is staggering—information that search engines, data aggregators, and other technologies continue to organize and mine.

Concurrently, information about job applicants is increasingly difficult to obtain or trust. Fearing libel claims, many employers avoid giving references for former employees aside from employment dates (Shilling, 2009). Concerned over extreme impression management (Barrick, Shaffer, & DeGrassi, 2009) and deception (Griffith & Converse, 2011), employers often question information garnered via the conventional communication practices used for selection (e.g., résumés, interviews). Employers also face increased negligent hiring claims (Shilling, 2009) and pressure to improve hiring outcomes to increase competitive advantage (Kraaijenbrink, 2011).

Enter cybervetting. Enabled by new communication technologies, cybervetting occurs when information seekers (employers) gather information about targets (workers) from informal, non-institutional, online sources to inform personnel selection decisions (Berkelaar, 2010). Unlike background and credit checks—which use institutionalized, public records and require workers’ permission and/or adverse action reports—cybervetting typically involves ad hoc, covert, extractive communication. Namely, contrasted with interactive, if asynchronous, communications of conventional selection (e.g., résumés, interviews, background checks), cybervetting usually occurs without workers’ specific knowledge, permission, or opportunity for correction (Berkelaar, 2010; also see Ramirez, Walther, Burgoon, & Sunnafrank, 2002).

Thus, cybervetting offers employers information no longer available from conventional sources and information previously difficult or impossible to obtain. Because cybervetting extracts information often communicated or constructed for purposes other than career advancement, it implicitly promises access to the “real” person (Berger & Douglas, 1981). Cybervetted information often differs in times, contexts, order, and sources from information acquired via conventional practices. Such differences help explain cybervetting’s popularity (Cross-Tab, 2010), yet also fuel popular and scholarly criticism (Clark & Roberts, 2010).

Despite cybervetting’s popularity, researchers have yet to systematically and empirically examine how people perceive cybervetting. Perceptions matter because they are “real in their consequences” (Thomas & Thomas, 1928, p. 572). For example, when an applicant perceives a practice to be invasive and/or unfair—common criticisms of cybervetting (Berkelaar, 2010)—the applicant is less likely to accept the offer and more likely to file a legal claim (Stoughton, Thompson, & Meade, 2013). When individual perceptions accrue and coalesce around what counts as appropriate behavior for certain relationships and contexts, implicit social agreements—or social contracts—form (Rachels, 2011). People often respond to social contracts as if they were natural laws, rather than tacit, socially and communicatively constructed agreements (Phillips & Oswick, 2012).

Thus, this study examines how employers and applicants make sense of cybervetting. Analyzing how talk about cybervetting converges or diverges offers insight into whether, how, and to what degree collective expectations for personnel selection may be shifting or evolving (Buzzanell, 2000; Phillips & Oswick, 2012). As selection practices shape career practices and vice versa (Lair, Sullivan, & Cheney, 2005), analyzing talk about cybervetting will also clarify expectations for—and thus socialization into (Jablin, 2001)—work, career, and employment relationships. Moreover, who gets selected and how employers treat workers in the process remain central to legal and ethical considerations of justice (Cheney, Lair, Ritz, & Kendall, 2011). Consequently, this study answers calls to examine everyday ethics (Sonenshein, 2007), practices (Rynes, 2012), technologies (Solove, 2011), and likely career outcomes of (Berkelaar, 2010) personnel selection from a communication perspective (Dipboye, 2014). To begin, I situate cybervetting in the legal and social context of U.S. personnel selection.

The Inadequacy of Legal Compliance and Existing Social Agreement

In recent U.S. history, legal compliance has functioned as the standard for evaluating personnel selection. Human resource (HR) personnel codified selection processes to prove legal compliance and ethical control. Even as compliance has proven a strong legal defense (Shilling, 2009), such structural control is unlikely to manage cybervetting because online technologies remain difficult to control (Allen, Coopman, Hart, & Walker, 2007) and cybervetting typically circumvents, ignores, or is addressed inconsistently by existing legislative guidelines and employment protections (Solove, 2011). Although numerous laws and codes of conduct attest to employment protection needs (Shilling, 2009), cybervetting does not neatly fit existing HR guidelines, the organizational or legislative structures enforcing such guidelines (Peebles, 2012), or normative expectations for employment relationships (see Buzzanell, 2000).

Even if organizational compliance were possible, legal guidelines remain unclear about employers’ social media use (Abril, Levin, & Del Riego, 2012). Unresolved legal and social conflicts over privacy complicate evaluations of cybervetting: Arguments favoring cybervetting consider online information public or visible (i.e., available and easily accessible; Treem & Leonardi, 2012); opposing arguments consider online information private, personal, irrelevant, and unstandardized; with attendant risks for illegal discrimination (Abril et al., 2012; Kluemper, 2013). No explicit standard clarifies cybervetting’s ethicality. Instead, scholars urge employers to consider economic and legal trade-offs when choosing whether to cybervet (Peebles, 2012).

If one accepts that legal compliance often operates, however (in)appropriately, as a proxy for ethical decision making, and that law is a social practice made possible by “an interdependent convergence of behavior and attitude—what we might think of as ‘agreement’ among individuals expressed in a social or conventional rule” (Coleman, 1998, p. 383)—the absence of clear legal standing on either precedent or law makes it difficult to provide a clear footing for control mechanisms even if those mechanisms were likely to work. For now, U.S. law provides no definitive guidelines except for third-party contractors (Federal Trade Commission, 2011), whose reports must exclude many types of information employers report wanting (Berkelaar, Scacco, & Birdsell, 2014). Lacking legal clarity, employers must resolve cybervetting’s conflicting legal liabilities and opportunities independently (Peebles, 2012).

People also evaluate personnel selection via social agreement. Social agreement helps shape accepted conduct (Coleman, 1998), providing clues into appropriate behavior. Persistent social agreement can create social contracts—implicit agreements governing what counts as acceptable behavior for certain relationships or contexts, via a set of rules “people would accept on the condition that others accept them as well” (Rachels, 2011, p. 145). As people describe particular behaviors as inevitable, normal, natural “fact of life” duties or opportunities, they construct when, where, and how people should view and enact particular roles like employment relationships, thereby helping to create and reinforce social contracts (Buzzanell, 2000, p. 213).

Although persistent, social contracts can change in response to economic, social, information, and technological pressures. For example, under the “old social contract” U.S. employees expected lifetime employment, fair pay, benefits, and career development in exchange for loyalty, acceptable effort, and satisfactory attendance (Buzzanell, 2000). As downsizing became normative in the 1980s, a “new social contract” emerged—although not without resistance. Employers began offering employment contingent on individual contributions to the bottom line (Buzzanell, 2000). In response, workers began framing their value explicitly, using increasingly curated and branded communications to manage impressions in agreed-upon selection and career advancement contexts (e.g., workplaces, interviews, résumés; Lair et al., 2005). As brand-focused communications spread, employers began to distrust conventionally communicated information (Barrick et al., 2009). Cybervetting offered employers an efficient, cost-effective, low-barrier-to-entry solution, allowing anyone involved in personnel selection access to applicant information, including people without training or identification with relevant legal and ethical codes. For those who cybervet, effort and time invested is low; (perceived) risk is low; and (perceived) reward is great.

However, although cybervetting promises employers a cost-effective, available solution, it disrupts norms for when, where, and how employers acquire applicant information. Consequently, cybervetting violates implicit work/non-work boundaries inferred by the “new social contract” as it expands the contexts within which personnel selection, and therefore career advancement, occurs. The new social contract—which specifies how, when, and where employment relationships should occur—offers no clear proviso stipulating how employers and applicants should communicate given online information’s visibility and the expanding contexts new information communication technologies (ICTs) afford for selection. Given cybervetting’s popularity, unclear legislation, inadequate social expectations, and increased information visibility, how do employers and applicants make sense of cybervetting to determine appropriate communication practices for personnel selection, and correspondingly, career management?

Exploring everyday perceptions of cybervetting provides one way—and by no means the only way—to begin untangling these dilemmas. This is not to say that perception offers the standard for ethical and appropriate behavior. However, individual and normative perceptions offer one standard by which people judge organizational practices and by which social contracts (Donaldson & Dunfee, 1994) and attendant behaviors arise over time (Phillips & Oswick, 2012).

Everyday Perceptions and Evaluations of Organizational Practices

Informed by prevailing social agreement of how things “ought” to be, organizational justice research examines whether applicants believe organizational decision processes and outcomes are fair, relevant, and transparent—namely, open in communication and accountability (Gilliland, 1993). Research demonstrates that perceptions of selection practices shape ethical evaluations of, and responses to, organizations: For example, when an applicant considers a selection practice unjust, job acceptance decreases and those who accept positions are less productive and more likely to quit (Schinkel, van Vianen, & van Dierendonck, 2013).

As practiced, cybervetting seems to violate expectations for how applicants believe personnel selection should work. As one type of organizational justice, procedural justice focuses on whether people believe organizational processes are fair (Gilliland, 1993). Fair processes exhibit consistency across persons and over time; bias-suppression; correctability; accurate information use; representativeness of parties; and alignment with ethical codes and social norms (Leventhal, 1980). With its extractive, ad hoc process, cybervetting raises questions across all six criteria.

Yet, empirical research rarely addresses how applicants perceive and will likely respond to cybervetting even as cybervetting differs in communicatively consequential ways from other selection practices (see Stoughton et al., 2013, for exception). Existing research on technology use in selection focuses on whether automating existing practices affects procedural justice perceptions (e.g., applicants consider online tests as fair as paper-and-pencil tests; Sears, Zhang, Wiesner, Hackett, & Yuan, 2013). However, cybervetting neither automates nor replicates existing processes: Employers who cybervet access different types and sources of applicant information from different role contexts than typically acquired during conventional selection. Although desirable to employers, such differences will likely affect evaluations (Jablin, 2001), as ICTs reorder and collapse information fragments across time and space (Marwick & Boyd, 2011). Applicants may also consider cybervetting a privacy violation depending whether they view online information as public or private (Solove, 2011)—an ongoing debate complicated by the different reasons and roles people communicate online (Marwick & Boyd, 2011). Furthermore, cybervetting is typically covert thereby affecting applicants’ responses: Since applicants can never be certain when or if a particular organization is cybervetting them—but can anticipate that most organizations cybervet—applicants’ online postings will more likely address general expectations for work and career, rather than expectations of particular organizations .

When an organizational process (or its conditions) changes, people engage in sensemaking—interpreting what the changes mean for them and how they should respond (Weick, 1995). When sensemaking, people often adapt dominant beliefs to help guide and legitimate interpretations and responses to the practice being considered: here, the addition of cybervetting (Sonenshein, 2007). In contemporary Western society, transparency offers a—and some would argue the—primary criterion for evaluating organizational behavior, particularly information acquisition and use (Turilli & Floridi, 2009). Thus, transparency offers a starting point for understanding and evaluating this new selection practice, and a context within which to situate employers’ and workers’ accounts and evaluations of cybervetting.

Transparency as Ethics in the Information Economy

The notion of transparency—or openness in communication—remains central to contemporary perceptions and demonstrations of ethical behavior (Plaisance, 2007)—and scholarly criticisms of cybervetting as unethical (Clark & Roberts, 2010). In a post-Enron era, organizations that communicate “relevant, timely, and reliable information” (Williams, 2005, p. 361) appear transparent and presumably can be trusted (Oliver, 2004). In Western society, transparency operates—at least linguistically—as a proxy for ethical behavior (Turilli & Floridi, 2009). Typically, the amount of information communicated offers a measure of relative transparency: More information indicates greater transparency and therefore ostensibly more ethical conduct (Plaisance, 2007; Turilli & Floridi, 2009).

Within organizational contexts, implicit expectations for transparency have shifted from reactive to proactive disclosure. In analyzing contemporary demands for organizational transparency, Oliver (2004) describes how the old transparency required that organizations communicate information if asked. In contrast, the new transparency “imperative” requires organizations proactively make information visible so that desired information is available sans requests. By requiring proactive disclosure, the new transparency imperative increases the “frequency and scope of demands” on the observed (Oliver, 2004, pp. 3-4), who now must consider any and all information observers might desire. Thus, even as transparency persists as an ethical proxy, shifting expectations place increased responsibility on organizations to make information available and accessible to all potential current and future audiences.

Information ethicists Turilli and Floridi (2009) confront this popular acceptance of transparency as ethical proxy, arguing that information transparency—whether new or old: “is not an ethical principle in itself but a pro-ethical position for enabling or impairing other ethical practices or principles” (p. 105). Transparency may fulfill ethical principles of accountability or protecting others’ welfare via information sharing (e.g., informed consent). However, the privacy, freedom of expression, or confidentiality concerns of other circumstances (e.g., health records), may warrant protecting rather than sharing information.

Thus, when evaluating communicative practices like cybervetting, it is imperative to consider the interdependence of potentially competing ethical principles (Turilli & Floridi, 2009). Involved parties should provide the information necessary to endorse principles of transparency without violating principles that regulate information flow; this includes the secrets and privacy well-functioning societies need (Turilli & Floridi, 2009). Ethical information acquisition and use requires recognizing that why and how information is communicated is as or more important for ethical evaluation than what information is communicated or how much (Plaisance, 2007). By respecting information receivers’ ability to exercise reason when making decisions and information owners’ varying reasons for, and ways of, communicating information, transparency can embrace Kant’s persons-as-ends principle (Plaisance, 2007). Transparency, in this sense, can become ethically valuable by “presum[ing] an openness in communication and serv[ing as] a reasonable expectation of forthright exchange” (Plaisance, 2007, p. 188) between involved parties. However, cybervetting as practiced does the opposite, hiding employers’ actions and denying workers “forthright exchange” (emphasis added), ironically because employers feel conventional applications lack forthrightness and transparency.

A Kantian perspective emphasizes the need to protect human autonomy and dignity alongside empirical, rational, and economic goals (Kant, 1781-1803/1991; Plaisance, 2007). Kant does not take a purely utilitarian approach—insofar that information-seeking means justify economic ends. Rather Kant argues that behavior should be evaluated using the categorical imperative: (one version of which is) the extent to which a behavior could become a universal law while respecting human dignity (Plaisance, 2007). Evaluating outcomes is insufficient; behavior must be examined as if it were to become universal. Thus, a Kantian perspective presumes that all parties are duty-bound to act transparently to “fulfill our obligation to honor the rational agency and free will of everyone with whom we communicate” (Plaisance, 2007, p. 189).

Even if employers and workers adopted a Kantian perspective on transparency and information ethics, practical challenges remain. First, it is cybervetting’s covert potential that promises to address employers’ fears of extreme impression management, deception, and the legal risks of negligent hiring. Second, even if both parties accept the ethical value of forthright and transparent communication, how do employers determine what information is relevant to accomplish their selection task? Correspondingly, how do workers determine what to share given competing motivations for online communication (Marwick & Boyd, 2011) and the personal and professional costs of being digitally invisible or visibly “unprofessional” (Berkelaar et al., 2014)? Third, Kant (1781-1803/1991) and Plaisance (2007) do not address how ICTs simultaneously make some actions visible and others opaque. What are the implications of information asymmetry for personnel selection, career, work, and employment relationships? Finally, people rarely apply rational or theoretical ethical reasoning (Sonenshein, 2007). Instead people make sense of situations intuitively, constructing plausible interpretations from available cues and values to induce actions addressing immediate needs (Sonenshein, 2007; Weick, 1995)—here economic pressures on employers to select good workers and on workers to be selected for employment.

Despite these challenges, what is clear is that transparency operates as a salient, if inadequate, value for evaluating communicative behavior and that evaluations should consider all relevant parties. What remains unclear is how employers and applicants evaluate cybervetting given its growing popularity; and the limitations and contradictions of existing legislation, HR guidelines, economic pressures, and social agreements. Acknowledging that accounts reveal people’s sensemaking and assumptions about particular practices (Alvesson, 2003), and help predict future actions (Phillips & Oswick, 2012), this study asks: In what ways do employers and applicants make sense of cybervetting? Furthermore, because coalescing accounts can reveal shifts in social norms (Alvesson, 2003; Buzzanell, 2000) and likely behaviors (Phillips & Oswick, 2012), this research question also considers: To what degree (if at all) do employers’ and applicants’ sensemaking align? and What are likely implications of this sensemaking on personnel selection, career management, and the employment relationship?

Method

Participants

I purposively sampled a diverse set of 45 U.S. employers and 44 job applicants to yield detailed, robust, and accurate insights into this relatively understudied, sensitive topic (Lindlof & Taylor, 2010). Employers represented varied U.S. industries (e.g., consulting, education, finance, law, manufacturing, politics, retail, social services, utilities), organization sizes (10 to >10,000 employees), roles (e.g., engineer, HR, lawyer, manager, owner, recruiter), levels (entry-level through executive/owner), and 13 states. This group primarily included HR personnel, recruiters, managers, and executives. Mostly Caucasian (81%), there were slightly more men (24) than women (21; median age = 35 years). All actively participated in selection in the past year.

The 44 job applicants actively participated in U.S. job searches within the past year. Applicants were slightly younger than employers (median age = 22 years), representing diverse occupational (e.g., education, engineering, HR, IT, law, management, politics, public relations/marketing, sales), industry (e.g., defense, education, health, IT, law, management, politics), and organization-level interests (e.g., entry through executive level). Predominantly Caucasian (79%), there were slightly more female (25) than male (19) applicants.

I recruited initial employers because of their organizational roles, diverse selection expertise and experience, and likelihood of generating leads to rich data sources and networks (Charmaz, 2009). I recruited initial applicants for similar reasons. Organizations often protect selection practices to shield against legal liability and to guard proprietary practices. Thus, after each interview, I requested referrals of people who might provide further or different insights. I only pursued referrals likely to refine or refute emerging theoretical themes (Charmaz, 2009).

Data Collection

People’s accounts of particular behaviors help reveal current and/or changing assumptions for social contracts (Buzzanell, 2000). Therefore, using semi-structured protocols, I concurrently interviewed employers and applicants about their personnel selection or job-seeking approaches. I first asked participants to describe their general process, then inquired how they used technology, before soliciting explanations of and perspectives on cybervetting. Given cybervetting’s disputed legality and organizational tendencies to consider selection procedures proprietary, I complemented direct questions (e.g., “Describe a situation where . . .”) with indirect questions (e.g., “Imagine a situation . . .”). Indirect questions provide as, or more, accurate information in ethically or legally questionable situations like cybervetting where people are more likely to offer socially desirable responses if asked directly (Patton, 2001). With participants’ permission, all interviews were recorded, transcribed, and redacted. Data included 71.9 recorded hours (employers = 38.7 hr, M = 54 min; applicants = 33.2 hr, M = 45 min), 1,352 single-spaced pages of transcripts (employers = 682; applicants = 570), and more than 300 pages of field notes.

Analysis

I used systematic inductive and abductive analytic approaches (Anderson, Schum, & Twining, 2005). Abduction seeks to explain a phenomenon by iteratively moving between data and multiple theories to inferentially construct an explanation for observed data using systematic “logical inference” and “insight” (Timmermans & Tavory, 2012, p. 171). By adapting and refining conclusions as new information arises, abduction seeks to synthesize knowledge by using specific observations to offer explanations, rules, or hypotheses to help evaluate the heuristic and practical potential of the sample being analyzed (Timmermans & Tavory, 2012).

Using a constant-comparative approach (Lindlof & Taylor, 2010), I identified, and then collapsed and reorganized initial codes until coherent conceptualizations emerged (Shepherd & Sutcliffe, 2011). I memoed about emerging themes, using subsequent interviews to refine, reshape, or reject tentative themes and to explore existing research more deeply. As transparency began emerging as a theme within and across participant groups, I deliberately recruited participants who could provide insight into contexts where transparency might be more significant (e.g., positions involving public trust; executive-level positions; positions in publicly visible organizations) or less significant (e.g., retail/food service; highly fungible positions). This helped to double check emerging explanations (Timmermans & Tavory, 2012) and also clarify how different organizational, industry, and occupational characteristics might contextualize emerging understandings of transparency and contemporary expectations for personnel selection.

To add credibility and further refine conclusions, I attended to outliers, distinctive absences, and negative examples, questioning assumptions and conclusions (Charmaz, 2009). When it appeared interviews no longer offered new information, I recruited five additional participants per group to test thematic robustness in conversation with experienced scholars (Lindlof & Taylor, 2010). We concluded that additional data would be “counterproductive” to developing overall understanding: Although the potential for new insights remains, adding data at this stage additional increasingly distracts from the research focus rather than enhancing the contribution and clarity of the overall story (Charmaz, 2009). Member checks with subsets of both groups confirmed that results resonated with participant perspectives.

Results

This study examines how employers and workers make sense of cybervetting—employers’ use of online information for personnel selection. Results illustrate how workers wanted, but did not expect, employers to be transparent about their cybervetting practices; employers expected workers to have sufficient, proactive information transparency online; and—despite resistance to cybervetting by many workers and some employers—both groups considered cybervetting “inevitable,” framing online information management as an expected, “fact-of-life” necessity of contemporary careers.

Wanting, Yet Not Expecting, Transparency From Employers

Participants described transparency as a central value for evaluating cybervetting (n = 59; employers = 17, applicants = 42)—unsurprising given transparency’s popular use as ethical proxy. Although acknowledging its value for employers, applicants found cybervetting’s extractive process problematic. Three quarters of applicants shared concerns that online information might be misinterpreted, inaccurate, outdated or misattributed (i.e., “belonging” to someone else):

I understand that they need to also make an informed decision. The only caution I would have is there could be false information out there, and I think, with having that false information that could hurt the candidate . . . And there’s not a chance for the person to correct it.

Since employers did not make cybervetting activities or outcomes visible, applicants felt they lacked opportunities to explain or correct misunderstandings. Fiona, an applicant, exemplified these concerns when describing her difficulties with cybervetting:

I guess, one, because they don’t tell you they’re doing it . . . And two, it’s tricking you. I feel like it would be tricking me because it’s not giving me a chance to explain or to [pause] defend yourself. You know how you twist things to be positive in interviews, like what’s your weakness? You try to make it positive, you know? You’re not just given an opportunity to defend yourself.

Even as Fiona illustrates applicants’ desire to communicate directly with employers about cybervetting, her implicit assumption that all interviewees “twist things to be positive” lends credence to employers’ concerns that covert information acquisition is necessary given applicant tendencies toward extreme impression management.

Applicants also argued that online information is irrelevant for personnel selection because cybervetting violates privacy in a way that unequally benefits employers. Cybervetting was described as “opening kitchen cupboards” or “looking into the living room.” As Lacey argued:

It kind of does suck if you’re that person that has all that stuff on there and it’s kind of like an unfair advantage [for employers], in a way, just because that is your personal life and you’re not supposed to mix your personal life with your work life kind of thing.

Another applicant, Lyle, went further, asserting that employers who cybervet:

Stalk their employees on the Internet . . . That strikes me as extremely unethical and kinda illegal—or it should be. It just seems like the kind of thing that if you were following someone around instead of looking it up over the Internet, you could probably be arrested for it . . . but if you were hanging out on someone’s property all day and watching them through the windows, that’s the kind of crap that gets you arrested and that’s basically the same thing.

Lyle considered online behavior ethically comparable with off-line behaviors: If one can evaluate individual ethics or expertise via artifacts of online behavior, so too can one evaluate organizational ethics. From Lyle’s perspective, even though online information may be more conveniently visible than many off-line behaviors (e.g., “publicly available” like “an open window”), expectations for ethical behavior in off-line physical spaces still apply online.

Although most applicants typically considered online information “personal,” many applicants noted employers could cybervet for “legitimate needs.” When asked how he would feel about being cybervetted, Noah, a political appointee, reflected,

I don’t have anything on those that I would be bothered by anybody knowing so on one hand there’s nothing to hide. On the other hand, it would depend on what the organization was and how badly I wanted the job. If I felt that it was a legitimate need. I mean if I was interviewing for a job at McDonald’s I’d probably say “No, I’m not interested in providing you with that information.”

Even when offering that legitimate cybervetting might be possible, applicants did not agree on what constituted legitimate cybervetting. For example, most employers and applicants—including people who criticized cybervetting “in general”—supported cybervetting for occupations involving “public trust” (e.g., teachers, military, police). They asserted that transparency across life spheres was necessary for community-oriented occupations. However, people currently in, or seeking, such positions, considered such scrutiny unfair—an unnecessary “invasion of privacy” extending beyond professional obligations or civic responsibility. Yet, even as most workers only wanted to be cybervetted for legitimate reasons, many, like Noah, suggested instrumental goals would alter the willingness to be cybervetted. Indeed instrumental goals pervaded and preceded most applicants’ eventual resigned acceptance of cybervetting: “I might not like it,” but “I need a job.”

Therefore, although applicants (and some employers) considered cybervetting an “invasion of personal space,” and wanted organizations to be transparent about the process and outcomes, providing opportunities for correction, most participants resigned themselves to cybervetting’s covert inevitability. Given the ease of access to online information, applicants often capitulated: “it’s kind of insidious . . . but I understand that it happens.” Both groups accepted, or resigned themselves to, cybervetting’s technological inevitability, using matter-of-fact terms like: “This is the way technology is going.” Although “it feels intrusive” to almost all of these participants, cybervetting is “reality.”

Expecting Sufficient, Proactive Transparency From Workers

Transparency also emerged as key value for evaluating workers (n = 81; employers = 42, applicants = 39). Employers reported cybervetting because they lacked (or had lost) sources of credible applicant information—a concern many applicants also acknowledged. Employers who cybervetted (or would “if it was allowed”) wanted to see “the real person” rather than excessively managed or deceptive performances anticipated from conventional communications. Because of “the openness of the Internet as a whole,” employers reported “. . . search[ing] online for information on a person, just to get a better understanding of the person themselves.” Both groups repeatedly asserted that applicants put “their best foot forward” in interviews or on résumés because: “You’re trying to get the job. You’re thinking about portraying what the employer wants to see whereas on the Internet you’re not thinking about that.” Alongside their distrust of conventionally sourced information, employers wanted more ways to evaluate applicants’ overall character and identity, arguing like David, a hiring manager, that cybervetting offered value because “You’re not just hiring someone because of their degree. You’re hiring them because of their character, because of who they are.”

Although most employers cybervetted covertly, one employer reported making direct overtures. Chris, a social media manager, made “friend” requests to evaluate applicants’ social media expertise, and to assess whether they were “really involved in” or had “something to clean up” online. (His inferences depended on the amount of time applicants took to respond: More than an hour indicated lack of social media involvement or questionable content.) Chris would “send a little note along with ‘Hey I just got your résumé, you’re applying for this position, I’d like to take a look at your Facebook.’” Chris continued that he would

try to be rather transparent with them . . . If I just were to randomly friend them and . . . they accept my friendship, it, it could be somewhat misleading, you know. I’d rather be upfront about it and say, “I’m a potential employer” (laughs) so that they, there’s no hard feelings. If they leave something on their Facebook account that they shouldn’t have there and they know who I am and that I’m trying to be their friend and that I’ll be able to see that stuff, they’ve made a decision that impacts their job rather than me making a decision that impacts their job. (emphasis added)

By invoking and presumably enacting transparency, Chris legitimated cybervetting and addressed applicants’ general desire for awareness of online information searches; however, Chris’ process simultaneously assumes workers will digitally manage and share any and all online information as denying access would likely undermine employment chances.

In searching for “the real person” who “would be beneficial to have working for you,” many participants—even critics of cybervetting—considered transparency essential for evaluating character. Most employers and applicants noted that people with “nothing to hide” should not worry: “Refusal in those cases is sort of an admission of guilt, you know? It’s sort of like refusing a breathalyzer . . . it kind of reflects poorly.” In most cases, nothing-to-hide assertions closely followed reports of, or recommendations for cleaning digital profiles before job seeking.

Moreover, employers assumed sufficient applicant information would be available online. As one executive exemplified: “I mean it’s very easy to get information, so kind of, from the interviewer’s perspective, you kind of expect them [HR staff] to do more research than in previous times.” Another manager noted,

hiring goes down like every other project in life, to kindergarten—choose your friends wisely, which for us means hire, you know, rock stars; and do your homework, meaning do your research, which, you know, that has been made extremely easy.

Underlying beliefs of easy access and sufficient information, employers assumed workers would digitally enact new transparency expectations, making information available online without being asked. Indeed, many employers believed cybervetting would not bother younger applicants: “The younger generation, I don’t think they’re going to think anything of it. They’re going to go ‘I wouldn’t expect anything less.’ I mean, the younger generation assumes that everything is public; the older generation does not.” However, this was not the case. Participants’ sensemaking about employers’ use of online information did not seem to differ by age, but rather differed in terms of communication intentions: Cybervetting felt intrusive when employers presumably search information intended for a non-work audience, role, and/or context (as illustrated in earlier quotes where “younger” generations considered cybervetting “stalking” or “looking into one’s living room”).

Employers generally considered more information better, an assumption consistent with normative beliefs about transparency and the new transparency imperative.

At the end of the day, the objective is to find out as much as possible about the person I’m about to hire, and vice versa, right? . . . If you start seeing like negative things out there, either that says that the person is somebody you cannot really trust or it can also mean that basically the person is not really careful with what they put out there. Well, if they’re not careful about their own life, well, what does that say about, you know, if you have them as part of your organization and you give them some confidential information about your business? It could be dangerous . . . it’s like a way to kind of filter out the kind of candidates you don’t want. (Executive)

Operating from this more-is-better assumption, employers, like this news director, justified online seeking because it was available and not legally protected:

I would consider it private information, from a legal perspective, you never really signed a contract with your friend to keep it private, and really, even if the information got out, the company couldn’t be held responsible; it would just be the friend. It’s really a question at this point of should the company use that information? I personally don’t have much of an issue with the company using the information if they know a way to get a hold of it.

Correspondingly, employers viewed lack of online information suspiciously. If applicants had less information than equally qualified applicants, “that would make a difference.” Employers reported being “more likely to hire” those who gave “a little something more” because it showed “they have nothing to hide.” Most employers “tend[ed] to be in favor of having a lot of information but then expecting people to use their brain in sifting it.” Although two employers questioned whether cybervetting would be “useful . . . right now,” most employers did not question whether available information should be used. Rather, they questioned whether they would “get caught” or occasionally whether cybervetting was legal: “I don’t know if it’s legal or not. Is it legal? You probably know.” Only a few expressed invasion of privacy concerns.

In sum, these findings consistently evidenced new transparency assumptions for workers—namely, workers could, and therefore should, proactively present information online. For these employers and most applicants, workers failing to demonstrate proactive transparency online were considered dishonest, unethical, or otherwise unsuitable for employment.

Considering Professional Online Self-Management “the New Normal”

Whether or not they supported cybervetting, every participant—except one small business owner—considered online persona management “necessary” for contemporary professionalism, being a “serious worker,” and career success. Regardless of organizational size, industry, occupation, or organizational age (e.g., start-up), participants invoked a shared expectation that online self-management is the “new normal.” Workers “need to take responsibility for whatever they have on their Facebook page . . . I think that’s good professional-wise.” It is “almost [like] having an electronic résumé . . . it’s got to be very pro-you and ‘this is why you need to hire me’ sort of thing.” Digital professionalism expectations persisted even among the few employers and many applicants who felt online information “shouldn’t come into play . . . ideally.” Although employers “don’t need to see that [online information],” cybervetting critics consistently recommended workers to “be smart about it [online information]” and to “get himself [sic] out there.” Both groups shared the expectation that workers were responsible to create and curate online information in service of professional, work-related outcomes.

As part of this expectation, both groups emphasized the need for workers to anticipate cybervetting. Employers put the burden (of proof) on workers: “Every person is responsible for how they portray themselves.” Workers were expected to be persistently and comprehensively aware of career advancement implications: “You almost have a responsibility to make sure that you’ve looked at everything that you can look at that may negatively represent you because of the connection.” Even if information was faulty or provided by others, both groups agreed workers “have nobody to blame or nobody to give credit to but themselves if the information is negative or positive for them.”

On rare occasions when employers viewed themselves as applicants, employers still stressed responsibility and agency by workers asserting “I have the power to delete the post and I do when that happens.” Consistent with the new transparency imperative, both groups expected proactive information provision—as lack of information would be viewed negatively:

Just provide as much information as possible, you know. It’s probably better to have, you know, too much information than like not enough, because people are going to be hesitant if they think like you’re holding something back or whatever.

Most participants believed people were responsible for all online information about themselves. However, a few, like Julie, a manager, felt: “I should be held responsible for what I do online” (emphasis in original) not for what other people or technologies posted about her.

These data showed how both groups expected workers to prioritize professional identity concerns online despite other, potentially competing, goals (e.g., social support, identity exploration, hobbies). Instead of questioning cybervetting’s likely consequences, both groups repeatedly emphasized cybervetting as “the way to do business” or the “way business is done” often implying, and sometimes directly stating, workers “should expect it” because “we live in an Internet world.” Some employers argued new digital responsibilities benefited workers:

Why would people get offended? [Employers] are doing their job. That’s all they want to do . . . It’s a healthy process. It’s a good process. That’s how things need to be. Because, as I told you, no one can say “It’s none of your business,” because this is what I would say: They are hiring you as a person, as an individual . . . People want to know. [emphasis added]

Like participant responses generally, this example demonstrates how both parties to the employment relationship accepted cybervetting’s inevitability—and concurrently extensions of workers’ responsibilities to engage in digital information management because it is

Just a fact of life. I mean, in today’s world, that’s just part of the source of information. I mean, you need to find about something. Guess what people would do? Google™ it . . . That’s just part of how we do business, if you will. [emphasis added]

Even people who considered cybervetting invasive were resigned to its inevitability: “You can’t fault them for wanting to know how you represent yourself and what others think of you.”

In sum, participants rarely questioned increasing pressure to prioritize worker roles or identities, suggesting instead that cybervetting was technologically inevitable: “I think that with the Internet it’s inevitable. You can’t stop somebody from doing that . . . You have to be smart about it.” Thus, as employers sought applicants aligned with organizational brands, they extended work expectations beyond conventional temporal, physical, or fiscal employment boundaries: “Everything needs to be tight” because “you’re hiring the whole person.” Although workers disliked cybervetting, they too accepted it—and by extension online career management as “the new normal,” with one exception: One applicant refused to be visible online; however, because he possessed “rare computer skills,” he was protected from the negative employment consequences of being digitally invisible in an environment expecting proactive information disclosure online.

Discussion

This study examined employers’ and applicants’ sensemaking about cybervetting. It considers how convergences and divergences in sensemaking inform expectations of and likely responses to contemporary personnel selection, career management, and employment relationships. Consistent with popular uses of transparency as ethical proxy (Plaisance, 2007), both groups evaluated cybervetting from a transparency perspective. Whereas a Kantian approach encourages fulfilling expectations of mutual transparency, human dignity, and universal application of a particular practice, these data highlight asymmetrical transparency expectations that increase expectations for workers to privilege work goals and roles online.

Both groups desired transparency; however, workers did not expect employers to be transparent about cybervetting. Workers found cybervetting ethically deficient, yet inevitable. In contrast, employers not only expected transparency from workers, they—with applicants—extended the new transparency imperative to individual workers and online contexts; expectations heretofore applied to organizations (Oliver, 2004). Workers are now expected to proactively provide, manage, and curate sufficient, desirable information online. All else being equal, people with more digital transparency were considered more ethical and employable.

Employers justified cybervetting and applicants allayed concerns through repeated, often forceful, invocations of the phrase “nothing-to-hide.” This nothing-to-hide argument privileges the proactive disclosure assumptions of the new transparency imperative. Typically offered in defense of government surveillance, the phrase implies privacy is inherently and exclusively motivated by intent to hide negative information (Solove, 2011), instead of recognizing that privacy can serve valuable and ethical societal functions (Turilli & Floridi, 2009); and respect human dignity (Plaisance, 2007). The nothing-to-hide argument also obscures how cybervetting increases organizational control: Because workers do not know when, where, or what is being cybervetted, they cannot respond to cybervetting outcomes. Rather, the most employable workers will likely engage in collectively expected proactive online information transparency.

Converging Toward a Digital Social Contract

Shared assumptions that workers should proactively curate online information for effective career management offer more than practical recommendations for managing unequal transparency. Theoretically, these results suggest that cybervetting likely disrupts the tacit social agreement—or social contract—for when, where, and how people believe they ought to think about, talk about, and (expect to) enact employment (Buzzanell, 2000). When both parties—however reluctantly—describe cybervetting as “the way business is done” and “just the facts of life,” their talk reveals shifting norms for personnel selection, and accordingly career management and employment relationships (Buzzanell, 2000). By communicatively constructing a set of expectations or “rules” for how workers should behave (Rachels, 2011), converging sensemaking informs and induces action, whether or not the sensemaking reflects reality (Phillips & Oswick, 2012; Weick, 1995) or ethical ideals (Sonenshein, 2007).

These shared expectations suggest the emergence of what I label the digital social contract—the terms of which create a new form of work. Fundamentally, the digital social contract prescribes normative expectations for workers’ digital visibility in exchange for employability, thereby expanding the worker role. Workers—whether actively seeking jobs or not—are expected to manage self- and other-generated digital information within and across times, contexts, and roles not conventionally considered for career advancement. The digital social contract thus erodes taken-for-granted assumptions about when and where career evaluations and advancement occurs, reinforcing the worker role as primary and increasing workers’ employment responsibilities without concordant changes for employers.

Arguably, many professions and the new social contract have long expected workers to engage in career management and self-promotion to maintain employability (Buzzanell, 2000; Lair et al., 2005) and certainly employers have long desired more information about workers (Jablin, 2001). However, the new transparency expectations evident in participant talk extend unpaid work demands further in terms of times, roles, and contexts. These expectations are aggravated by the need to maintain employability as people (involuntarily) switch organizations and/or occupations repeatedly under the new social contract (Buzzanell, 2000).

Under the terms of the digital social contract, employment relationships remain transactional exchanges; the onus is on individual workers to manage and develop career competencies (Buzzanell, 2000). On the surface this seems innocuous: The Internet simply provides another communication tool for selection and career advancement. At a deeper level, the communicative characteristics of cybervetting so desirable to employers also further power imbalances in employment relationships. Cybervetting allows employers to extend employment evaluations across social spheres, without clarity on how effective, or when cybervetting occurs. Shared adoption of the new transparency imperative for workers further blurs work/non-work boundaries providing a way to discipline workers across social spheres prior to and during employment, and prioritizing corporate interests at the likely expense of other individual needs and rights (Deetz, 1993). Because cybervetting allows any online site to be a context for employment evaluation, at any time, visible career advancement is now expected to be ongoing.

Negotiating Expectations of the Digital Social Contract

Social constructions of shared meanings direct how individuals and society should react to cybervetting. As with the shift from the old to the new social contract described earlier, the emergence of the digital social contract has practical implications for individual careers and employment relationships more broadly. Workers now face unique communication challenges as they navigate potentially competing online goals, roles, and identities (Marwick & Boyd, 2011) and consider short- and long-term consequences for careers and life.

In terms of employment, it is to workers’ career advantage to create, curate, and manage information about themselves online, potentially limiting which identities, roles, and contexts are privileged given invisible employment audiences. However, such prioritizing of work roles and goals might background other identities, roles, and goals that inform individual and societal well-being (Marwick & Boyd, 2011). Curating online information is difficult for even highly skilled organizations. Organizations—let alone individuals—struggle to enact the needed socio-communicative and digital literacy skills. Furthermore, individuals control over and resources to manage online information remain limited as technologies and other people also create, reorder, and aggregate information in ways that shape evaluations (Jablin, 2001). For example, technological aggregation of seemingly innocuous data can offer unintended details to employers (Solove, 2011) who make evaluations based on profiles of “the friends we keep” (Walther, Van Der Heide, Kim, Westerman, & Tong, 2008). There are no easy solutions.

However, possible suggestions include considering mutual transparency and developing communicative competencies. Employers should consider how mutual forthrightness could benefit the development of alternative solutions that mitigating the selection risks of not cybervetting and address motivations for cybervetting. Applicants should develop digital communication and information management skills that serve career advancement goals, while also providing strategies for sequestering information for non-work roles. Moreover, both groups could consider mutual transparency when implementing and evaluating organizational and career practices. They should consider ways to equip themselves with the necessary competencies for curating digital information across collapsed contexts, information asymmetries, and surveillance possibilities ICTs afford. In sum, findings suggest the need for a new etiquette and ethics of personnel selection based on mutual forthrightness, universality, and respect for the person-as-ends. Enacted via technical and communicative competencies that recognize the how, where, and why people communicate is as important to evaluations as what (Plaisance, 2007).

Moreover cybervetting’s current motivations, assumptions, and practices divert attention from systemic issues in personnel selection and employment relationships—needs for accurate, trustworthy information; and organizational, as well as social, justice. Although employers value forthrightness, these data suggest failure to appreciate the need for and benefits of mutual, relevant transparency (Kant, 1781-1803/1991; Plaisance, 2007). Ironically, although employers are themselves workers, few seemed to consider possible consequences for themselves as workers (or other workers) who might be unequally disadvantaged by the digital social contract emerging from cybervetting as practiced. Current conceptualizations that frame those with digital visibility as more employable, and those without as “having something to hide,” suggests naïve failure to appreciate the value of secrecy. Expecting a uniform, digital-context-crossing identity that privileges professional values treats persons as economic means and ends rather than as human beings. Research and practical solutions, that consider empiricism, rationalism, and human dignity (Kant, 1781-1803/1991) could help create more sophisticated understanding of how online information does and should (not) be incorporated in personnel selection.

Social contracts need not benefit one party. Current practices offer one possible enactment of (online) information seeking. By implicitly accepting cybervetting as the way business is done, employers and applicants blind themselves to likely long-term implications for organizations, (themselves as) workers, and society. Evaluating the new transparency imperative and the digital social contract offers an opportunity for assessing the ethics and effectiveness of personnel selection as practiced. In so doing, this study offers guidelines for alternative communicative practices or solutions that are mutually forthright, respect human dignity, and increase organizational justice. For example, a Kantian expectation of mutual forthrightness suggests a possible way of rethinking personnel selection and the employment relationship. Not unlike realistic job previews (Jablin, 2001), mutual forthrightness implies openness and honesty regarding relevant information to the goal at hand (Kant, 1781-1803/1991; Plaisance, 2007). Workers want open, forthright communication about and during cybervetting, including explanations from employers, opportunities to correct misunderstandings or address problematic information, and cybervetting for legitimate purposes only (as yet not socially or empirically established). Employers might hesitate to offer how and what they want to know, suspicious that forthrightness would lead to “gaming the system.” However, even as employers seek observational contexts free from excessive impression management and deception, these findings ironically suggest employers expect workers to manage online information—by definition, manage impressions.

Paradoxically, cybervetting may undermine the primary reason employers cybervet. As workers become increasingly aware of cybervetting’s prevalence, communicative practices of extreme impression management and self-branding will likely extend into digital spaces (with impression management occurring before the screening interview, heretofore considered the earliest stage of job screening; Tyler & McCullough, 2009). Those with the necessary technical and/or socio-economic resources already practice such online reputation management (e.g., hiring companies like ReputationManager.com to curate and manage online information; Kluemper, 2013). Such anticipatory career practices adulterate cybervetting’s promised access to the “real person” and a good fit while potentially compromising the benefits of non-work goals and roles pursued online.

In short, these findings suggest that the new transparency imperative continues to develop as a central cultural value for ethically evaluating workers; the acceptance of which leads to the digital social contract. Given the material consequences of employment, workers would be well-served to consider how they might fulfill, yet not reinforce, the digital social contract—engaging in necessary digital visibility performances while sequestering other aspects of one’s digital social presence to resist digital corporate colonization, maintain autonomy, and serve interdependent individual and collective information goals (Kant, 1781-1803/1991; Turilli & Floridi, 2009). Furthermore, given information visibility and employer pressures, it is naïve to think that a unilateral ban on cybervetting would be practically effective. Rather, educating both parties about necessary media literacies and broader ethical interdependencies of information and privacy affords opportunities to consider and shift the implications of current cybervetting practices.

Future Research

Further inquiry into the digital social contract is necessary to validate and advance understanding of shifting expectations resulting from sensemaking about cybervetting. Future research should collect random, representative samples within and outside of the United States, both for generalizability and to account for different legal and social understandings of privacy that might alter cybervetting enactments and evaluations (Solove, 2011). Historically, social contracts have been associated with particular time periods and national or regional cultures. However, given the contemporary global economy, the rise of multi-national corporations, and globalization generally, future research should consider whether, how, and in what ways the digital social contract translates across regional, national, or global groups. Researchers should also consider how different interpretations of transparency and ethical norms might influence sensemaking about cybervetting. Ethnographic research involving direct observations could help identify any differences between reported beliefs and actual practices. Longitudinal research could offer insight into the development and implications of the digital social contract over time.

Conclusion

Enabled by new information communication technologies, employers are cybervetting, although workers may wish otherwise. In making sense of cybervetting, employers and workers extended proactive information disclosure expectations from organizations onto workers: Workers are expected to be proactively transparent, curating online information in service of career goals as a normative “fact of life” practice. Such shared, taken-for-granted assumptions point to likely shifts in the social contract—the implicit expectations for when, where, and how workers should manage information about themselves. I label this shift the digital social contract.

By examining workers’ and employers’ talk about cybervetting, this study moved toward a theoretically and empirically grounded explanation of contemporary expectations for work and career. It explicates how people’s sensemaking about —and the information acquisition and uses they afford—shift personnel selection practices as well as expectations and likely practices for career management and employment relationships. In sum, these findings offer an empirical foundation for understanding ethical personnel selection given short- and long-term implications of information communication technology use and information visibility organizations and individuals. Findings highlight the centrality of information visibility to selection practices and ethics, and transparency as a persistent, yet unquestioned, cultural value for ethical assessment. Finally, this study underscores the need to continue considering how technologies affect everyday practices and perceptions of personnel selection, careers, and employment relationships.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr. M. Scott Poole for encouraging me to explicate the phrase “digital social contract” I included in the discussion section of an earlier conference paper.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The original data collection for this project was partially funded by the Purdue University Graduate School.

Author Biography

Brenda L. Berkelaar (PhD, Purdue University) is an assistant professor in communication studies in the Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin, USA. Her research focuses on how messages and technologies affect work and career choices, practices, and outcomes.

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