<p>At least according to the “Ethicist” of the New York Times Magazine. An alumni interviewer asks if it is ok to google the student he is going to interview who has applied to attend his alma mater. Especially if he finds some nasty myspace stuff. Is it ok to ask the interview candidate about these things? Is it ok to include research findings in the interview report? The Ethicist says, no! I wonder if the same view applies to professional college admissions officers who are reviewing applications. </p>
<p>Article should be available online in the next day or 2, and is in print.</p>
<p>I think the interviewer is entitled to google the candidate. As to the ethics of the situation…I think it’s ethical. I mean, if the candidate puts the information out there on the internet, making it accessible through a simple google search, then that is definitely not unethical. I mean, you have to be VERY obvious about your online stuff to get your myspace/nasty info accessible through a name search. As far as I know, you can make a myspace page without ever divulging your real name. And you can make your Facebook info private and unsearchable to outsiders. Because the candidate in this case didn’t take basic precautions like these, the interviewer is not overstepping his or her ethical bounds when accessing the candidate’s information.
Basically, my point is, the interviewer is only overstepping ethical bounds when he/she goes further than a basic Google name search.</p>
<p>Oh please. Google provides information that is PUBLIC! Why should it be unethical to check on PUBLIC information?</p>
<p>(I got an email from my daughter a few days ago. She’d googled my husband (her father) and discovered that the first thing that popped up was out wedding announcement from the NY Times. From 1984. She thought that was pretty funny.)</p>
<p>I think some of you are confusing the question of whether the information is fair game to be used against a candidate with the question of whether it’s an alumni interviewer’s role to ferret out potentially negative information external to the application. Not adhering to the boundaries of your role can be an ethical lapse even if what you are doing may be acceptable for other people in other roles.</p>
<p>My understanding of the alumni interviewer’s role (admittedly gleaned from CC) would suggest that this isn’t the interviewer’s role…that if obtaining and using this kind of information is important to the college, it has other means and individuals to obtain it.</p>
<p>If I were the administrator of a college, I wouldn’t want alumni interviewers doing this kind of PI work. First off, students talk, so it can create a reputation for the school that alumni interviews are an adversarial proceeding and put students more on the defensive than they already are. This isn’t what I would want in the interview process, since it might skew the results. Second, given the #s of individuals with similar names, the ease with which a person could create a myspace or other website under someone else’s name, etc., having alumni interviewers make recommendations based on this kind of information puts the college at risk of liability if the information turns out to have been unreliable. </p>
<p>If I’m an administrator, I want alumni interviewers to do the job I’ve asked them to do, no more, no less, and not go off on tangents that may hurt the school in the long run, and I would consider it a violation of the trust I’ve placed in them for them to overstep those boundaries, and thus an ethical lapse.</p>
<p>I do agree that the information is fair game, but not for alumni interviewers unless the college defines that as part of the role, which would also include providing them with training on how to vet the information, and accepting responsibility for the consequences of how the interviewer uses the information.</p>
<p>If someone chooses to paste himself all over the internet in a profane or ludicrous manner, then he is also subjecting himself to the judgement of whosoever chooses to view his webpage, be it MySpace or Facebook, though “FB” is much more exclusive. I see nothing wrong with the actual viewing. However, in a review, an interviewer should only take into account exactly what is being presented to him and especially not information that the candidate has not given to him himself. I might compare it to a jury trial. In his or her decision, a jurymember may not take into account evidence that has been discounted by the judge, such as heresay.</p>
<p>what was most disturbing about the ethicist piece was that the interviewer asked the college admissions office about whether or not he should be considering the online info he’d unearthed and the admissions office said he shouldn’t consider it. However, the admissions office asked him to include the url so that they could access that info when he sent in his recommendation - and the interviewer did this. So there in the kid’s file for all to see is the link to whatever he posted. I agree with conyat and think this interviewer overstepped boundaries.</p>
<p>I agree with conyat–the interviewer has one role, to judge the candidate based on the INTERVIEW. Would it be okay if he traveled to his hometown and interviewed his teachers, friends, neighbors, etc? Why not then call them “global information gatherers” in that case?</p>
<p>I did this once for a job interview and turned up the guy’s myspace page with tons of comments from girls he’d met in bars that week. Talk about awkward.</p>
<p>I have a pretty common name and my main worry is that someone is going to try to google me and come up with results that they attribute to me, even though it’s not really me. I don’t have a myspace, and the only thing with my real name associated with it is the resume/portfolio website I have that I link employers to anyway. I would hope in my case they would be smart enough to realize that they’re looking at hundreds of different people, but it would be worse for someone who had a less common but not 100% unique name. It’s certainly unfair to be trying to judge people based on your internet research of them, when the stuff you’re finding doesn’t even have anything to do with them to begin with. </p>
<p>I don’t think it’s fair to use it based on hiring decisions, admissions decisions, etc. when what you are supposed to be looking at is interviews and applications, but once you “know” the information it’s hard to just forget about it and it’ll unconsciously color your perceptions of the person. At the same time, though, don’t put it on the internet with your name on it if you don’t want anyone to find it.</p>
<p>As a long-time interviewer, I agree completely with the view that I should not be using googled information in any way shape or form as part of my evaluation of an applicant. It’s a no-brainer. In fact, anyone who thinks that they know anything of value about an applicant based on unsubstantiated, unreliable things read on the Internet is misguided. </p>
<p>That said–while it is not the case for all schools or all situations, it is the case for most that the interviews are predominately good-will missions. I agree with the poster who said that it’s not a stint as a PI. </p>
<p>We live in a culture disturbingly consumed with making snap judgments about people based on scant information. Let us not forget that we are talking about 17 or 18 year-olds who should be evaluated with kindness and not as though they are the latest fodder for People magazine.</p>
<p>^I agree with Nimby58 100%. I know a young lady who had pictures stolen of her. They were altered and put onto a fake myspace. This could happen to anyone.</p>
<p>I think it is unethical to Google your candidate because you might end up with information on the wrong person.</p>
<p>Many people have identical names.</p>
<p>My daughter, for example, happens to have exactly the same name as a documentary filmmaker. If you Google my daughter’s name, almost all of the links that you get will be about that person, not my daughter.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure, what with knowing all sorts of identifying factors about a student (school, e-mail, background), interviewers wouldn’t have too big a problem with figuring out if information they find online is about the correct person.</p>
<p>That being said, I think there is nothing wrong with interviewers Google-ing interviewees. Students have nothing to worry about if they are prudent with what they put on the Internet; in fact, I think some student searches might even be beneficial. When I Google myself, I come across entries from school, local newspaper, and other organizations’ websites related to my academic achievements. My name can even be found via Google in the roster for various school honor societies, which proves my membership. Even if I had a MySpace or a Xanga, I would certainly not post anything that brings into question my personality or otherwise. If an interviewer can demonstrate, through Google, that a student is bigoted, cruel to animals, etc. then reporting this will help the admissions officers, who are unlikely to have the time to perform background checks on all applicants via Google.</p>
<p>Granted, you can’t believe everything you read on the Internet, but if an interviewer knows what to look for, they can reveal information about a student that should play a role (good or bad) in the admissions process.</p>
<p>If that is so, then it’s up to the admissions department to find and evaluate that info–not the interviewer. As I said above, the interviewer has one role in the process, the interview. It’s not about whether the student has “something to worry about” as it is mission creep on the part of over-zealous interviewers departing from their roles.</p>
<p>My S has an extremely common name, and I too worry about mis-identified information, but apart from that I also believe that it’s a question of professional conduct on the part of the interviewer to stick to the part of the process s/he was assigned to, rather than freeform freelancing.</p>
<p>I have a problem with either the interviewer or the admissions office digging up information online that the student hasn’t offered in their application. This would also apply to a job interview. Not only does the student not have the opportunity to address the information and correct it if it’s wrong, but it puts the candidates in a very unequal position with regard to one another.
I know that in hiring, you are supposed to give candidates an equal opportunity to present their qualifications and be judged on what you put forward. If you go digging around for outside info on one person, they you need to do it for all. I would think this same standard would apply to college admissions.</p>
<p>And speaking of making errors - my daughter has the exact first and last name ( not all that common) of a girl that was a year ahead of her at her college. She had to use her middle initial, which she never did before, in all her email and other school correspondence or it would get mixed up with the other “Susie finklestein” '. When googling the college and her name, information of both girls comes up, and you’d have to know then well to tell which story belongs to which girl. Fortunately, for my D, the other Susie has a lot of positive notations by her name, but the point still holds.</p>