After the Pulwama attack, the social media has been abuzz with news of several people being sacked and celebrities trolled for their comments on the terror attack. 

This has brought to light how an action, which can be deemed as a private one – such as putting up posts on personal profiles on Facebook and Instagram – can affect jobs and even careers.

Posting a strongly-worded religious opinion on Facebook or giving public access to a highly frivolous Instagram profile can translate to job rejections, reveal several high-profile HR heads and headhunters in the city.

 

Vinodh Chelambathodi, chief HR officer in Financial Software and Systems said that a post on social media can render years of developing a skill set, or countless hours prepping for an interview useless.

He also said that one’s online presence plays an important part in landing a job and its role would become more prominent in the future. Interestingly, Vinodh has also developed an algorithm that assesses one’s “social intelligence” with just their e-mail ID.

“Companies submit the e-mail IDs of the prospective applicants and the algorithm throws up their digital data to ensure they aren’t online predators or abusers along with an assessment of their personality. 

It will explain the person’s political inclinations, their lifestyle and even if they are a morning or night person,” said Vinodh.

The algorithm combines the objective of a police verification process and a personality test at one go by tracking the behaviour of the person on 25 different sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Glassdoor, AngelList etc. It then rates the person on 10 for eight traits like emotional stability, extroversion, agreeableness, conscientious, openness, etc. “Their privacy is not forsaken at any stage. The assessment is based only on publicly available information that the person has voluntarily uploaded online,” said Vinodh.

The checking of a job applicant’s online presence has become a norm in the west, and is gaining momentum in India, revealed Vinodh, who has assessed the social intelligence of applicants at around eight companies so far.

Naresh Rajendran, the head HR at Grundfoss Pumps in the city, said, “Gone are the days when a job was granted based on a resume or interview. Recruiters can check LinkedIn, but the information there has been tailored to suit career needs. So, we turn to assessors of social intelligence like Bactrack in Chennai, which draws up a complete personality assessment of the applicant for us, making it easy for us to make a call. Recruiters go to this measure primarily for leadership of managerial roles.”

Job seeker Sneha (name changed), said, “I applied for a marketing job but was rejected because I didn’t have any account on social media like Facebook, etc. The company said they needed me on social media to network for the role. It was absurd that my people skills were evaluated based on my online profile!”

“Endorsements on certain social media platforms don’t hold any value anymore. A complete digital check is necessary to assess people’s traits like narcissism, the way they think and their communication skills which could affect the company when they are bought onboard for an influential role,” said Sandesh Naidu, the founder and CEO of HR consulting firm ValueED Excellence.

Rajesh Balasubramanian, the group head of HR at Synergy Maritime Private Ltd, said, “Applicants for highly saturated roles like coding are assessed on the personal interest they show online. Their participation in online competitions like Hackathon, for instance, will give them a boost. One’s appropriate online presence is an aid in landing a job for sure, and the weightage of that will only increase in the future. If the weightage is 15 per cent right now, it can become 30 in the next couple of years.”

KK Prahalathan, the founder of NGO Bhumi, said that social workers view a strong social media presence as an essential skill from recruits. “We recruit across two categories - volunteers and full-timers. It’s a boost for us when volunteers are active on social media as it draws more of them - 50 to 60 per cent of volunteers join us because they saw their friend post about it. For full-timers, networking is more crucial and now, social media has become the primary way to connect to more people.”

Rajan Kumar, who is doing his Masters degree in Education abroad, said, “I was offered a job because of a crowdfunding campaign I posted on behalf of a friend who was setting up a play area for primary school children in a slum in Tondiarpet. The company wanted me to be the marketing executive based on my summary on the crowdfunding request.”

High: Leadership, managerial, sales, republic affair roles

Medium: Highly saturated skill set like coders, client management roles

Low: Admin, mechanic, engineer, fresher, junior, staff-level roles

On 14 February, a few hours after the terror attack in Pulwama, Riyaz Ahmad Wani, a medical representative based in Srinagar wrote on Facebook, ‘Athh wanaaan surgical strike (This is called surgical strike).’

Within an hour of Riyaz Ahmad Wani updating his Facebook status on the Pulwama terror attack, a mutual friend, Iqbal Hussain commented on his post: “This is called as real surgical strike.” Hussain works as a marketing executive at a pharma company.

Hours after the attack, Krishnendu Sengupta, an assistant at Durgapur branch of the LIC in West Bengal took to Facebook to lament the killing of Kashmiris by the Indian Armed Forces. Screenshots of Sengupta’s status began to be circulated on social media with people asking LIC “to take action against traitor Krishnendu Sengupta.”