Spy vs. Spy was, and may still be, a regular cartoon feature in Mad Magazine. The cartoons contain no dialogue and features two spies, one black one white, locked in an eternal struggle in which they are constantly trying to get the better of each other in ever more elaborate ways. Originally conceived as a parody of the Cold War it put me in mind of the discussions around social media such as Facebook and Linked In and how they are being used by employers and employees alike to check one another out. One ought also to extend that to blogs, and I have it on good authority that Live Journal users are now firmly under the gaze of the Kremlin!

A recent Microsoft Survey released at the end of January is revealing:

Our study found 70% of surveyed HR professionals in U.S. (41% in the UK) 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 (and at least two thirds of those in the U.K. and Germany) stated that a positive online reputation influences the candidate’s application to some extent; almost half stated that it does so to a great extent.

The article concludes that:

What we hope people take away from this research is that an online reputation is not something to be scared of; it’s something to be proactively managed. That means not just removing (or not posting) negatives, but also building the online reputation that you would want an employer (or friend or client) to find.

Reams have been written on corporate reputation and the importance of protecting it, but what about the reputations of mangers and senior staff? Many of them also have online profiles that employees and candidates can check out, and it is not unknown for disgruntled staff to post their feelings about their companies and their managers in public online forums. Background checks work both ways. Does my manager check out my profile on Facebook or watch my activity on Linked In? Do staff and team members check up on their managers? It sometimes seems that in the information society of the early C21st employees and employers are, like the Mad spies, in danger of becoming lost in developing ever more elaborate ways to find out more information about each other.

It is easy to get carried away by the media hype and spin and make this more of an issue than it really merits, but there are some evident dangers here that are worth keeping in mind. Personally I suspect that online privacy may become much tighter both from a technological perspective and from a regulatory one which will make it harder for all concerned. Until that time it is probably a case of user beware whichever side of the fence you are on.