Many people seeking employment these days try every tactic to put themselves ‘out there’.Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, Twitter, and personal websites and blogs are all common place in our lives. Should they be common place in your business’ hiring strategy?

There’s a lot of personal information out there about people for the taking –should you take it? While hiring, you may be tempted to add a little cyber stalking to your recruitment process and get some dirt on your pool of applications. Don’t.

Although Facebook, Twitter and MySpace may seem like a good place to find information about people you must first think about the type of content that is put up on social media sites. For the most part, the information posted on Facebook is personal, casual, and informal. When taken out of context, the information you find may not please you.  

Unconscious biases are formed from the barrage of information and images that you come into contact with on a daily basis. Unconscious biases lay dormant and predict how you may react to a particular situation, idea, or person and may determine how you make decisions.

If you see an unsavory picture of an employee partying, find out that they belong to a particular political party, or discover they hold strong convictions towards hot-topic issues, you are gathering information that will impair your ability to view them fairly.  

Ask yourself, what if you discover that a prospective employee has a criminal background, a severe medical issue or marital problems? Would that information taint your decision making process?

If you answered ‘no’ I would have to argue that you are being less than truthful. Although you may like to believe that you are unbiased– you aren’t.

After snooping on someone’s Facebook profile you may think “Wow, they still party like they’re in college.” OK, an innocent enough thought, right? But you, thinking like any other employer, will probably ask next “Will they come into work hung-over?” You can see how closely the second statement follows after the first.

Unconscious biases may seem harmless, but when those biases start tainting actions such as hiring (or firing), you can get yourself into hot water. Digging up incriminating information can make you vulnerable to many types of legal allegations.

A recent New York Times article reports that Germany has drafted a bill that will make it illegal for employers to research prospective employees on purely social networking sites like Facebook. The aim of the bill is to ensure that employers aren’t ‘friending’ and ‘following’ employees with the sole purpose of getting dirt on them.  The proposal will create guidelines for courts that handle social media and discrimination cases.

So, play it safe and don’t go digging around for information on social networking sites. Rather than looking candidates up on Facebook, try LinkedIn. LinkedIn profiles are meant to be professional and work-related. You may be pleasantly surprised and discover skills, talents, or accolades that a candidate has. In addition, LinkedIn has a feature where professionals can gain recommendations from coworkers and supervisors. These recommendations can give you a more practical bearing on a prospective employee’s character than their Facebook page.

Instead of investing time trolling online for dirt—invest your time in finding a candidate that fits your company’s ethics and committable values.  Trust me—your time will be better spent. 

I listened to this great interview that aired on NPR’s Marketplace on August 19 with CEO of Zappos, Tony Hsieh. Hsieh discusses how he defined his company’s culture and then used that culture to create core values. With these core values in place, Hsieh determined the dynamic of his workforce and increased his employees’ overall happiness and productivity.

Although companies may have core value and principals, Hsieh argues that many don’t have committable core values. Once the principals are written and etched onto a plaque, Hsieh argues they are never instilled in employees. So, what are committable core values? Hsieh defines committable core values as values you are willing to hire or fire an employee based upon, independent of their job performance.

Hsieh wanted Zappos to have a list of  core values that employees could be held responsible for.  These core values created goals to aspire to and in return drove performance and productivity.

This is a great interview to listen to and it's only 30 minutes long.Check it out!