Yesterday, my hiring manager grilled ten candidates. After 6 hours of interviewing, he walked out the room and conferred with me.
“Joey,” he says,” they’re all pretty good. Experience and academic-wise, these guys are big guns. Problem is, many of them have some vice or the other. Like this guy George- he’s got a thing for LSD. And Mark- he likes young boys.”
Of course I thought he was joking. There’s no way that could appear in someone’s curriculum vitae. My face betrayed flabbergasted consternation.
“Haha, you’re wondering how I got that? Social search man. Social search.” Then he proceeded to demonstrate google-like search engines that provided such search services.
I sampled few of these sites and discovered exactly what social search pertained to. Unlike conventional engines that centered on general information, these sites focus on people. By entering anyone’s email address, these search engines track down purchase habits, sites visited and even secret affiliations. The vast majority of these services offer limited data. To access deeper information, the subscriber had to pay. My hiring manager paid one year in advance and I saw why.
Using his account, I keyed in some emails of associates. A few minutes later, the site spits out a mass of data that summarizes what it analyzes from Mr. X. The report was shocking.
Mr.X was a liberal who loved buying thriller books on amazon. He frequently travelled to the Carribean and recently was contemplating buying an anti snoring aid. He also had a thing or sex toys and in fact had amassed a collection of vibes.
Whoah. That was quite a bit of information!The drilldown gives anyone with a credit card access to what most people consider to be private data. In the hands of hiring managers like my friend, this can be a boon. Imagine all the undesirables such services can weed out. The downer is that a gossipmonger or blackmailer can use the same tools to harass and intimidate. Indeed, what we have here is a double edged sword!
There are about 5 big players in this industry now. In no time, we may have a dozen.What do you think are the repercussions of this?
