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Facebook profiles can predict job performance
A new study says looking at people's profiles on the social network can predict how dependable or emotionally stable a person is.
This final note today -- either the secret to good human resources management at companies everywhere or yet another indicator that Facebook is nothing more than an enormous time-suck.
There's a study out in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology this month looking at whether people's profiles on social networks -- by which they mean Facebook -- can predict job performance.
The short answer is you bet they can. Which leads to this, at the bottom of the study: 1) They say they need to do more research to fully validate their findings. And 2) I'm quoting, here, "consideration of legal risks should be fully considered."
Yeah.
This is an important early study and looking at the link between Facebook activity and job performance, albeit with a relatively low sample set and over a short amount of time. The authors acknowledge this themselves and as the study states, more research in this area is required.
Our organization, The Online Privacy Foundation, recently examined Facebook activity and Personality, and while ours and all similar studies converge around the same identified relationships, it's important to stress what statistical significance means in the context of employee pre-screening. To their credit, the authors of this recent paper do an excellent job of highlighting the limitations and moral/ethical issues.
In a recent blog post, we describe the margin of error in current approaches to Facebook personality prediction and cite similar concerns (discrimination etc) to Kluemper et al. The article is on our web site here: https://www.onlineprivacyfoundation.org/just-how-accurate-is-facebook-pe...
On balance though, and putting the headline aside, this is indeed an important and much needed piece of research.
Finally, we're currently conducting a subsequent investigation using Twitter. People can participate at www.bigfive.me
