Employers´use of information seeking on the Internet in the recruitment process

Over the past years it has become increasingly more common for employers to check up job-seekers online, using a search engine, specific databases or social media. In this way employers may add information about specific parts of the job-seeker’s past, such as criminal records, or try to capture the job-seeker’s “data double”. Previous research on online behaviour in general and social media in particular, has focused on the data subject’s online action, how privacy settings are used and if online behaviour is modified due to potential data gathering by outsiders. In this project we turn our attention to the ones who gather this type of data and use it as access control for employment.

Our aim is to examine how employers and recruiting personnel interpret the data they find.