References and LinkedIn

LinkedIn is facing a class action lawsuit in California over its premium “reference search” function that allows employers to identify and approach applicants’ former colleagues.

 

Resourcing professionals who pay for premium LinkedIn account status are able to find people in their network who have worked at an organisation at the same time as a job applicant. Without informing them, the recruiter can then contact those individuals to ask about the candidates’ previous employment.

 

Four LinkedIn members, Tracee Sweet, Lisa Jaramillo, James Ralston and Tiffany Thomas, have filed a lawsuit claiming that the system violates the Fair Credit Reporting Act, a 1970 law enacted amid concern of potential misuse of consumer credit history...

 

For more details see Candidates sue LinkedIn over lost job opportunities (Robert Moss, Personnel Today).

Job hunting and Web 2.0

"It's not what you know but who you know," is an old saying about job-hunting.

In the world of social networks we "know" more people than ever and we can be connected to the people they know as well, making it easier to find work and hear about people using our personal networks...

See Why 50 is the magic number for job-hunting by Peter Bowes (BBC News) for more details.

Employee rights and LinkedIn

Millions of us use professional network LinkedIn as a sales, marketing and database tool, either through personal profiles or LinkedIn groups.

Some of us have a few contacts, while others have hundreds – but the ownership of these on the site has been the subject of legal debate in the UK and abroad...

For more details see LinkedIn contacts: who owns what? (Philip Landau, The Guardian).

Web 2.0 and redundancies

It looks like Web 2.0 tools, especially those related to social networking, may have a part to play when many workers lose their jobs.

This is the view taken in an article in The Sunday Times yesterday.

The article centres on the founder of LinkedIn - Reid Hoffman.

For instance:

As unemployment has risen, the [LinkedIn] has tweaked some of its services to help jobless executives find stop-gap contracts or consulting work.

For more details see: Networker Reid Hoffman seizes the day by James Ashton for more details.