Privacy invasion the latest trend in job interviews

You may be very secretive otherwise, and not want to share your passwords for your email or social networking accounts, and rightly so. But what if it is your employer who is asking you for it?

In what is branded as an unethical and a rather provocative measure, candidates looking for a job have been asked to reveal their Facebook passwords to the employers or make friends with the Human Resources guys from the company, suggest cases abroad. And all this, as the employers are going around justifying it, merely to know the candidate better. Though the trend has so far been observed only abroad — where it has already created much furore amongst employees — we wouldn’t be surprised if we see it catching up elsewhere as well.

Says practising lawyer Sahil Mullick, “There is no provision in the law by means of which your employers have the right to ask you for your Facebook password.” He adds, “You can clearly deny them when they ask you for your password. But once you reveal it to them you cannot defend your right to privacy anymore, unless of course you have documented evidence that they have morphed your pictures or downloaded your personal information or done any personal damage to your reputation.”

Vibha Pradhan, a sales manager in Mumbai, calls this practice highly offensive and potentially damaging. “Why should my employers want to see my private pictures or personal posts? I should be judged by the work that shows on my resume, right?” she retorts.

However, Nitin Bhasin, a Delhi-based communication professional, feels that it may be justified to divulge a bit of personal information to your employers if the nature of the job is highly “sensitive”. “It totally depends upon the nature of the job,” he says. “Only if it is a highly sensitive job does it make sense for your employers to want to know your password because your Facebook profile says a lot about how much you divulge and to whom… All employers want their company details to be kept secret and this helps them access you on how much you can be trusted on dealing with important information,” he adds.

Well, this might be a lesson or perhaps yet another, new interview tip — to clear the clutter off your Facebook accounts, before you head for a big job interview next!