BEST OF THE WEB: Keeping on top of social media

Social media has been on employers’ radar for awhile now, and there are good indications that many businesses are now looking up potential candidates’ social networking profiles before they come in for interviews.

In fact, there’s evidence to suggest that many employers are now shortlisting candidates based on the information they’ll find on a social networking site.

This article on the New York Times examines this new obstacle. With more and more people putting up details of their lives on sites such as Facebook, the chances of potential employers finding something distasteful continues to grow.

The article profiles a new start-up called Social Intelligence, which actually screens all this information for employees. And they turn up some interesting results.

“Mr Drucker said his goal was to conduct pre-employment screenings that would help companies meet their obligation to conduct fair and consistent hiring practices while protecting the privacy of job candidates.”

“For example, he said the reports remove references to a person’s religion, race, marital status, disability and other information protected under federal employment laws, which companies are not supposed to ask about during interviews. Also, job candidates must first consent to the background check, and they are notified of any adverse information found.”

With so much legal uncertainty over looking at potential employees’ social networking profiles, Australian businesses would do well to read up on how the process is working overseas.

Google+

A lot has been said about Google+ already, with the network gaining nearly 20 million users and mounting a credible threat to Facebook. But analysts are beginning to wonder how Google, which has traditionally been focused on many different products at once, will turn the network into a global giant.

MySpace founder Tom Anderson has written a piece on TechCrunch about five lessons he learned while at the now-sold network that could help Google increase its chances of getting a global hit.

“Google has the engineering talent and ability to scale the G+ service (more valuable than people understand, right now, I think).”

“But does Google have the product people? Google’s technical infrastructure will allow them to do things that other social sites could not do – in fact, they’re already doing that.”

It’s an interesting look at what might become the next big networking tool for businesses, and a must-read for those who already have a profile.

Don’t be evil

And speaking of Google, there’s a great piece on The Atlantic from Stanford professor Evgeny Morozov on Google’s old mantra “Don’t be Evil”, and the long-standing tradition within the company to not see itself as a corporation.

Morozov analyses two books on Google and makes a number of interesting observations on the company’s internal culture, and how it’s managed to maintain that position even though it’s now got almost 30,000 employees.

“Google’s refusal to think of itself as a corporation is not irrational. Rooted in academia, it sees itself as a noble academic enterprise—spanning computer science, artificial intelligence, information science, and linguistics—that just happens to make money on the side.”

There has been a lot of talk lately on how Google is losing its start-up culture. This in-depth and academic analysis of Google provides a good insight into the philosophy behind that approach, and may provide a lesson or two for other tech businesses.

Apple’s cash problem

Last week Apple delivered some stellar financial results, as usual, and the company will soon overtake HP in terms of both revenue and profit – cementing its position as the biggest computer-maker in the world.

But one curious aspect of Apple’s financials stood out last week – it has over $US76 billion in cash. That’s a tremendous amount of money for any company, and has prompted questions about what exactly it plans to do with all of it.

A story on the Wall Street Journal has examined some proposals, including returning the money to shareholders. The money has also prompted calls for some philanthropic efforts on Apple’s part.

With the tech giant reaching $US400 a share, the questions will only keep coming regarding its cash reserves. And if it doesn’t do something soon, this may rapidly become a problem.