So I am looking for an internship for this summer and I've submitted a couple of applications. For some internships, they asked for a tweet or a link to the applicant's facebook page to presumably determine the applicant's social klout I would guess. So while I knew that some employers wanted to know how active a person was with social media, I was shocked to read an article which said that employers were asking for Facebook passwords from applicants during job interviews. This Associated Press reported that some companies and goverment agencies are asking for apllicants' passwords in order to log in and look around as the user. Apparantly troubled by this report, Senators Charles E. Schumer of New York and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut in an another Associated Press article said they were calling on the Justice Department and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to start investigations.
Now I suppose that, no I cannot come up with any reason why companies would ask for an applicant's password. Social media is an increasingly important part of most companies' efforts to increase their brand image among other things but I think asking for a password to verify an applicant's  social media credentials is going a bit too far. What do you think?
3/28/2012 02:47:39 am

I find it interesting that the DoJ and EEOC are becoming involved in this. On one hand, I can see the concern of possibly extorting information from a prospective employee for a chance of employment. But on the other hand, if a job calls for a thorough investigation of the applicant, social media accounts seem like fair game and compliance should be expected.

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3/31/2012 06:04:24 am

But I think a thorough investigation of an applicant can be done without the password to the applicants account. One way of the top of my head is "friending" the applicant. It's practically the same thing because you can view the person's statuses. I just think it's wrong to ask for such a personal information. Social accounts are fair game if put out there for the public I suppose, but a password is called that for a reason.

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