There’s a bit of data (or a rumor) being bounced around the #HREchoChamber this week that causing me a small amount of concern.
This jumped out at me twice this week, once on a FB status update, the other during a job seeker presentation by LinkedIn.com:
“70% of surveyed HR professionals in U.S. have rejected a candidate based on online reputation information. Reputation can also have a positive effect as in the United States, 86% of HR professionals stated that a positive online reputation influences the candidate’s application to some extent…”
This statistic was reported by Microsoft in January 2010. Judging by the views on their video (2,240) I don’t know how to react to these fear inducing claims. We already counsel our students and alumni on the perils of posting any information that would cause them to be rejected from the candidate pool.
So I’d like to offer a contrary statistic, one that I’ve just made up (call it SWAG based research):
“100% of HR professionals in the U.S. have rejected a candidate based on information gathered from their resume!”
I can hear the unwashed masses groaning “But John, how could you say that? Where’s the study or the data?” Here’s my response, “Easy, it’s my gut!”
You applied to the role in the ATS or emailed your contact who in turn passed the resume to HR. HR reviewed your resume and then made a decision to move you forward in the process or not. It happens.
And to my HR brethren, I’m absolutely positive that you’ve got a written policy somewhere where you spell out exactly how your company reviews every single candidates background on search engines or social networks who applies to a job, phone interviews, or physically interviews with your company.
I’m almost afraid to ask for statistics on that one…
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60% of the time it works every time.