Express Yourself, Just Not Too Much!

In the Hospitality industry it’s a pretty safe bet that we’ll be looking for someone to fill a position at our hotel. It happens. We hire a multitude of people for many positions in our business. There’s a lot to do to keep a full house comfortable.

One thing I will tell you as we look into people coming to work for us, we, as a company, run a background check. Of course this uncovers for us most major things that can be rummaging around in someone’s past but it doesn’t necessarily find everything. And having a background is not something that can keep you from getting one of our positions.

But something that is up and coming in popularity is online searches for people and their public profiles. Or maybe this is something bigger than I thought. Companies looking to hire someone can hire another companies that specializes in online searches for candidates looking to get hired. I’m not sure what the general perception is of people working in the hotel industry but I think it’s safe to say we are, generally, not savvy when it comes to these online kinds of the things.

Imagine my surprise when recently we were looking to hire a new front desk agent and we had narrowed our search to a few good candidates. As I was discussing my thoughts of each candidate with my co-worker he said, “well, let’s do a Google search of each candidate.”

I hadn’t really thought of that but figured, ok. We searched for our candidates and found their profiles online. Pretty easy. One had relatively nothing online and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The second seemed to have a very active social life. Lots of party pictures and fun times. I’m not against having a good time, let’s face it, I’ve even had a night or two that could be considered “blurry,” but when your looking at photographic evidence and the date stamp on them shows it’s practically every weekend, you tend to notice.

The third candidate seemed to have both a healthy balance of good times and family posts. Maybe from a friends point of view you want to see the “party” side but as a potential employer you want to see the stability a candidate has.

I won’t tell you who we hired but I will tell you this, a public search on the internet made our choice that much easier. Just goes to show your friends aren’t the only ones seeing what you have out there. Be careful.