SEATTLE, WA -- Joel Cheesman has an interesting post today on the recent change in Jobster's privacy policy. Joel rightly takes issue with Jobster flushing their old privacy policy in favor of a new, presumably more monetizable one.
But what interests me is that Jobster is forcing its users to declare their intentions to random passersby on the site. From now on, Jobster users must show their status as any one of the following:
- My Group is Hiring
- Happily Employed
- Busy but Listening
- Just Looking Around
- Please Hire Me
- Here to Network
- Open for Projects
D'oh! This is akin to forcing a married patron to wear his or her wedding band in a singles bar.
Suppose I hate my job, but I'm concerned that my company's HR department will see me on Jobster as "Please Hire Me." Not good. On the other hand, suppose I innocuously list myself as "Here to Network" so as not to get busted by my HR department -- when in fact I sincerely want to get a new job. Now some busy corporate recruiter might pass me over in favor of an openly motivated candidate. Happens all the time.
My point is that all of this Web 2.0 stuff is making it awfully hard for candidates to sneak around on their employers. I'm not criticizing Jobster, but ...
If I remember correctly, CareerBuilder has a function that allows users to prevent certain companies from seeing their profiles -- so if you work for Disney, you can set your profile so that Disney IP addresses cannot see that you're open to new opportunities.
Perhaps Jobster has a similar feature. Do they?
UPDATE: This post was picked up by USA Today.
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