I hired a terrorist to sand the floors of my new house seven years ago. If I had punched his name into Google, I would have known who he was. But I didn't and only found out later.

His name was Mike Bortin. He kidnapped Patty Hearst.

He was arrested later that year.

I think maybe it is a good idea to Google people before hiring them.

I wrote about this guy years ago. Here's what I wrote:

The Terrorist I Know

Shortly after September 11 my wife and I learned that we had hired a terrorist. He spent eight days in our house, right under our noses. We had no idea who he was at the time.

Shelly and I bought an old Victorian house two years ago, and the floors needed work. Boy, they needed work. Before I knew what I was in for, I thought I'd sand and finish the floors myself. Then we ripped out the carpet and took a look.

It was a real excavation. The floors were thrashed from 110 years of abuse. They had been painted six times (lead paint, of course), gummed up with carpet glue, slathered with black tar (for some inexplicable reason), tiled-over with fake metal "wood" parfait sheets, banged-up, scratched across, hammered on, and stained. The floors had never been sanded.

Our real estate agent said Mike Bortin at Zen Hardwoods did the best work in town. We called him and got an estimate. Then we hired him.

I could have punched his name into Google. He was a known terrorist, but he was not a fugitive. He lived under his real name. The feds knew where he was. If I thought to Google the guy, I would have learned the following:

He belonged to the Symbionese Liberation Army. He was involved with the kidnapping of Patty Hearst. He participated in a bank robbery where Myrna Opsahl was murdered. He spent time in prison for possession of explosives. He planned to blow up the naval sciences building in Berkeley to "protest" the Vietnam War.

I didn't Google him. Why should I? He came highly recommended. And he was a floor guy, for God's sake.

When I first met him I thought he was nuts. Maybe he was retarded. I had never met such an inarticulate person. He was like the guy at the front of the bus, yammering at the bus driver and ignored by everyone else. Every word was mumbled, and every word was slurred. A phone conversation was impossible. He had to be interviewed in person.

So we had him over to the house and I thought: He smoked way too much pot in the sixties. He's inhaled 500 pounds of lead paint dust. Brain cells shot to shit, can't utter a coherent sentence, but hey -- He knows wood. He knows his floors. Everyone says he's the best. We interviewed some other guy, but he was a punk-ass kid who didn't know or care about wood. This guy, Mike Bortin, said he loved wood. Said finishing floors is his craft. He offered to do all the prep work for free. So we hired him.

He did a smashing job, I must say. Everyone who comes to the house says they love our warm and shiny wood floors. It's the nicest indoor feature, and our house is Victorian.

So I recommended Mike Bortin to a colleague who also needed his floors done. A month later, he comes over to my desk, sits himself down, and says "The floor guy was arrested today. He’s in the SLA. He kidnapped Patty Hearst."

"Bullshit," I said. "Get outta here."

"No, really," he said. "His name was Mike Bortin, right? Gruff-sounding hippie-looking dude with curly hair. He’s on TV today."

I laughed. Laughed. How gullible did he think I was? I gave him a gentle shove.

"I have work to do," I said.

"I'm not going away until you open up Google and punch in his name,"he said.

So I did. I was sure Google wouldn' produce a damn thing. Or, if it did, some other guy named Mike Bortin was busted, and he was from LA or Yuma or someplace. My floor guy from Southeast Portland owned a business and had four kids. He was married and he was a simpleton. Too dumb to lead a revolution.

I punched in his name, just to make my colleague go away. That'sthe only reason, and I laughed when I did it. I was sure no kidnapping, murdering, pipe-bombing terrorist had worked in my house for eight days.

Boom. There he was. Our floor guy, hauled off to jail for murder by the feds. Patty Hearst? The SLA? Our floor guy was that guy?

I saw him on the news that night. Oh it was him, all right. I’d recognize him anywhere.

He said something to a reporter in a voice I did not recognize. Didn't slur a word. Didn’t mumble anything under his breath. Didn't talk like a doped-up retard. He pronounced his words clearly, and his eyes betrayed a spooky intelligence.

He does good work. I'm not surprised he comes recommended. Hell, I recommended him. It doesn't look like he's done anything wrong since his bad old SLA days. He's married. With kids. He tried so hard to push the bones to the back of the closet. But they just kept spilling onto the floor. And now he's in jail.

I still have his business card on the refrigerator. Zen Hardwoods. Something makes me keep it there. I don't know what it is. Somewhere in the file cabinet is a hand-written ten-year guarantee for the work he did in the house. He'll be out in six years. The work is two years old. That leaves two years to call him up and say, hey, the floors need polishing. Could you please come over and take a look?

I can't bring myself to throw his card away. But I am not going to call him.

My thought is that this is an excellent reason never to say anything online that might be construed as racist, sexist, homophobic, fascist, conservative or above all Islamophobic.

I just cannot believe how fearful we have become as a people. This fearfulness, in the long run is the greatest weapon our enemies have gained in their war against us.

Very depressing.

God forbid some employee should have a non-PC opinion, regardless of how good a worker they are. The company could get sued because Sally or Joe pointed out some unspeakable truth!

David Blue,

"My thought is that this is an excellent reason never to say anything online that might be construed as racist, sexist, homophobic, fascist, conservative or above all Islamophobic."

Odd that anyone would need a reason to avoid such things.

This concept of Googling on an applicant's name is very bitch like behavior. Therefore it doesn't surprise me that corporate American is in to it.

First the media rarely gets a story factually right and second they usually have a bias that may or may not fall in one's favor. If not in one's favor the deliberately slanted negativity amplies the inevitible factual inaccuracies to create a totally unreal picture of an individual that would stand in stark contrast to the individual's resume and/or interview.

Of course the inclination of the would be employer/HR department is to assume that the applicant is lying and that the scurilous crap out on the internet is accurate. There isn't even an opportunity for the applicant to address the issues raised by what was found online. He/She is simply dropped from the candidate pool. It isn't deemed worth the resources to do follow up on internet versus personal account discrepancies.

So rumor, gossip and innuendo rule the day. Again, very bitchy type way of going about things and classic corporate..

It occurs to me that there are also many ways to game corporate HR departments.

Pre-application, one could seed the internet with forged false accounts of glorious personal attributes and tales of commendable deeds. The HR department would find this stuff and...well, the outcome is obvious.

Say what you will and screw the PC Police. I gave up caring a long time ago. Afterall, who wants to work for some moron who evaluates an employee other than on merit? I do allow profession of truly crazy positions as a disqualifier - communism, nazism, etc.

Michael Totten raises a very interesting point, as usual.

One of the questions raised by my friend as part of her response was a related counter-question to HR: what are you looking for? Because the answer, to date, seems to be "random fishing expeditions."

Two complicating aspects as food for thought:

Legal bait. If someone's MySpace page contains answers to questions that would be illegal in an employee interview, what might this kind of research open a company to if discovered? This is not 100% risk-free behaviour on the corporate end. Is it worth it? When, why, and within what guidelines?

Veracity. Avedis saw this issue clearly. Of course, one could also use the reverse of Avedis Scientology-style reputation booster option against someone one didn't like. All you'd need is a digital photo or two of the person involved to make it seem very real - then go ahead and create MySpace pages et. al. with material designed to screw up their life if/when people search for them like this. If they aren't tech-savvy and savvy on recent developments, it will be a long time before the mark even has a glimmer of what's happening and why.

Given Totten's experience, plus these 2 issues, any further thoughts?

A few things:

1. I've been in several companies where it was normal for employees to Google every resume they see before interviewing the person. Whether it's legal or not, it's done - especially in small tech companies where employees use Google hourly as part of their daily routine.

2. If there are unusual claims on a resume, Google is the first place anyone goes, to check things like whether this person wrote a paper they said they did, holds a patent they claim, actually has an honor they list, etc.

At least in my field, the rule is you'd rather reject a good applicant than hire a marginal one that turns out to be bad, since hiring a dud and having to fire them is hugely expensive and organizationally disruptive.

There is of course a problem, if you Google me, you will find that I'm a female english professor who had a career in the '50's as an All Time great right handed Major League Baseball pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies.

I would tend toward the "not useful" view, except in unique circumstances like Foobarista mentions. Considering the amount of time it might take to confirm identities, etc., I would rather fire a HR person than make this an established practice. In small business, where ad hoc rules, well, let ad hoc rule.

It might be worth pointing out that traditional hiring practices include a fairly subjective, difficult-to-verify tool: calling the last employer. I've heard a number of interesting stories from former employers/supervisors. Given that many employment relationships end with at least some unmet expectations on both sides, you got to take these with a grain of salt.

I haven't googled potential hires, but I have googled potential clients. People you hire, you can fire. Entering into a business relationship with someone may not be that easy to extricate oneself from. And I think Totten's scenario fits here too -- letting someone in your home has special risks as well.

I'll make one policy observation: right to work laws or other vehicles to make it more difficult to fire someone increase the value and likelihood of investigation.

"I just cannot believe how fearful we have become as a people. "

It's nothing new. It started actually prior to the internet.

Remember when airline pilots and rail road conductors had to take drug tests?

Now you can't get a job as a receptionist without taking one.

Which is sort of ironic because you'd have to be whacked out on drugs to be considering working in a Fortune 5000 company (in my opinion).

But Googling applicants seems perfectly reasonable to me. As are criminal background checks, education verifications, etc.

It's always happened. It's just cheaper now.

I regularly google myself, so I am not terribly worried if my employer does.

Seriously, privacy on the internet is like peace - you have to pursue it.

Ha.....there are four of me that show up when I google my real name (not my handle here).

One is about my age and got into some trouble a while back in a business deal. Another is an apparently well known astrophysicist who has published several papers from a well known University and who goes on lecture circuit now and again. Another was a pro sports player in the late 1960s.

I was surprised at what came up under my name - even some news stories in my home town paper - I guess they have put all of their archives on line - from when I was a kid and playing on a sucessful little league team.

Scary....mistaken identity is a real possibility.

Katzman, I hadn't thought about the possibility of slandering someone on line. You're right that could also be a big problem. Is there a way to identify who actually put the material out there so that civil action could be taken? Is there a way to have material removed from the internet?

Scary stuff.

Just a thought about Facebook, et. al. I have a nephew who is a Gunnery SGT. in the Marines. He used to have a Facebook account. Recently he had to go to a SERE course, and suddenly thought that having such an account was not a good idea, and deleted it. Good thing he did. It turns out that the "interrogators" at the course had internet access and used Facebook, Google, etc. to break the cover stories of almost all of the students. The results were not good. If you are in any sort of career wherein anything covert is involved, or if you might be questioned under duress, perhaps such social networking is not such a good idea. The bad guys have the internet too.

Bear in mind that Archive.org has been indexing and archiving Web pages for over ten years: The Wayback Machine.

Maybe the SERE guys still have a trick or two to learn.

Avedis asks:

"Is there a way to identify who actually put the material out there so that civil action could be taken?

If they do it right, no.

"Is there a way to have material removed from the internet?"

Legal injunction will work. Threat of lawsuit may work, and in some case a direct appeal to entities like MySpace will work.

Point 1: HR is bad for business, perhaps the worst thing to happen to business in the last 50 years. HR rests on a false assumption: leadership is separate from personnel selection.

Point 2: HR employees are inherently incompetent to judge candidates. Leaders need lots of practical judgment, developed from practical experience, to evaluate job candidates. For all non-HR jobs, HR employees possess none of the required experience. Hence, they lack the judgment necessary to evaluate candidates.

Point 3: HR employees can do routine checks, like googling, but they cannot judge what they find. They cannot answer with good judgment this question: does it matter?

Point 4: HR should be abolished. We should de-professionalize the ridiculous bullshit called HR. We should return to the good old days of personnel departments when business leaders ran the hiring process and HR saluted the line business leaders.

Point 5: HR shouldn't be googling candidates, but leaders in the business should. Leaders can evaluate what they find. HR can't.

Overall, I generally agree with both Avedis' tone and assessment here. A first, I know, but it had to happen sometime.

Jeff (#19) nails my overall POV most exactly. There are exceptions, and I've met and known a few - but they tend to be exceptions, and the dynamics described in Tom Stewart's 1996 Fortune article Taking on the Last Bureaucracy... have moved many of those exceptions out of corporate HR and into consulting or recruiter roles.

The thing is, I have to acknowledge that if Jeff's (and my) recommendations were put in place, we'd see more use of Google this way, not less. Partly because folks reach for what they know, and partly because the process will be less refined and standardized. I'll trade that disadvantage for real understanding of the business and team any day of the week (vid. Nucor in Tom Stewart's article), but one must acknowledge that it is a trade.

Which brings us to Jeff point #5: if the folks doing the hiring are the division/team itself, and not HR, do the ethics of crawling MySpace et. al. change?

If the folks you will in fact be working with are checking you out for personal fit, rather than whatever random criteria pop into their head, is that an acceptable judgment? Or does a less standardized hiring environment mean you need taller fences around stuff that might be construed as a form of illegal question, or stuff that has the ability to be influenced positively or negatively by manipulation that non-HR professionals would be even less likely to detect?

Interesting questions, I'll open them to the floor.

I'll add that Personal hiring decisions, like having someone work on/in your house (vid. Totten), are fair game IMO, because they're not the same process. One is not a custodian of others' interests or goals, but solely of one's own perceived good with no other moral (or, in practice, legal) accountability whatsoever. Any source of information that may assist is welcome, and the decider pays directly for any bad decisions that may result.

Still, the discussion it triggered was useful, and Davebo's point re: drug testing and the reality of these kinds of slippery slopes was well taken.

Well there is always the reality that hiring for the decent positions - those paying real $ - are traditionally as much a function of who you know as opposed to pure qualifications as presented on a resume. This is because through the social network one's character and vices are known. There won't be any surprises.

It's even this way in the military for promotions - Major on up - and the good billets.

Maybe with increased geographic mobility and the breakdown of old networks googling serves as a form of substitute; albeit a poor one.

#19 from Jeff at 4:57 am on Dec 30, 2007

Great Post!!

"My thought is that this is an excellent reason never to say anything online that might be construed as racist, sexist, homophobic, fascist, conservative or above all Islamophobic. "

"Odd that anyone would need a reason to avoid such things."

Mark, I think the operative words here are "may be construed"--almost any legitimate discussion of race, gender, religion etc. these days brings with it the automatic accusation of racism ,sexism,intolerance, as the very discussion itself has become suspect.

Today I walked through a wildlife preserve. The guide was asked, "is this a natural lake?" He replied, "this is a historic lake". PC to the core, he would not mention the "D" word, even though the dam was clearly evident. Dams are just not acceptable in polite society anymore, along with a thousand other things. To mention them may be construed as acceptance. So we turn into mealy -mouths.

"Historic lake" doesn't sound PC to me. At least not like lefty PC. It sounds more like something a supporter of dams would say, rather than something an opponent of dams would say.

But I don't know, I wasn't there.

It was evident he used the term "historic lake" as dodge to avoid the term man-made or dam.

raven,

"almost any legitimate discussion of race, gender, religion etc. these days brings with it the automatic accusation of racism ,sexism,intolerance, as the very discussion itself has become suspect. "

Really? Is this true? I am so skeptical of the above that I would ask for a few examples.... and, allowing that "almost any" is a rhetorical exaggeration for effect, I'd settle for some sort of proof or indication that "one-quarter" of legitimate discussions, etc., to accept its accuracy. I would imagine that somewhere down the line there will be a discussion over what constitutes "legitimate" discussion. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Dam and man-made are not necessarily synonymous. Certainly, lakes created by dams would be man-made, but not all man-made lakes are created by dams. Couldn't whoever asked the guide about the lake have SEEN any dam that created it. Also (&, mercifully, finally) at WoC, "man-made" is never used. Anthropogenic is used in its place. Don't know why. More letters. Harder to say. But it makes one sound more, I don't know, scientific, I guess.

Happy New Year to you and anyone else reading this.

--the mark with a small em

One example might be the fact that a public official may not use the word "niggardly" without being deliberately misconstrued as a racist via the mass media.

Also, don't be so quick to blame the WoC crowd for using the term "anthropogenic" with respect to global warming. That is the precise terminology adopted by the scientific community studying the matter, e.g. anthropogenic global warming, AGW.

lurker,

That happened once, as I recall, about 6 years ago because one person was nearly illiterate. You can't really base a general trend on one incident that was the result of a misunderstanding. It wasn't a case of legitimate discussion about race, either...I think it had to do with a budget. It is simply that a lot of people incorrectly think that niggardly is derived from nigger and that if you use the former you are using a form of the latter. If that is your belief, however, mistaken, it is hardly a PC issue to not want the word used.....or is it too PC to not use racial slurs? But with that one exception, I think that a public official CAN use niggardly without being deliberately misconstrued as a racist (and it wasn't by the media. it was by a colleague....most of those who work in the media probably understand what the word means.) In any case, I don't think the example you cite is an example of what raven said.

I didn't mean to blame the WoC crowd for side-stepping "man-made" or to imply that they had originated the silly practice of substituting a classical greek term for a perfectly good english one. I meant to show that the use of euphemisms only because others use them (in this case the scientific community) is hardly a practice limited to the PC crowd. I thought that it was merely an example of this, i.e., use of euphemism, that seemed to irritate raven so much. I guess my point was to question whether the use of euphemisms is irritating only when you don't share the political leanings of the user.

You asked for examples, I gave you one. Why did we even hear about this in the media at the time if it wasn't getting any credence? Are media illiterate as well, having repeated the illiterate charges? Why did the guy lose his job? Was his boss illiterate too?

I think this is a perfect example, and exactly what you asked for. I don't think you are engaging the issue seriously. You asked for any example, and immediately dismiss the first one, without even apparently following the link.

I'm sorry that you are not pleased that WoC uses the current term of the art for anthropogenic global warming. I thought you were an advocate of science and scientific precision? Somehow, you try to twist it that WoC has a problem because they use current terminology of the topic at hand. Do you insist on being right about everything? Or just always getting the last word? Alternatively, you could just admit that this was just a throw-away thought.

In reality, you'll use anything to bash a perceived conservative, even if it's about something in common usage in all related literature. You also resort to the rhetorical equivalent of holding your ears when examples are presented that discount your position. That's my perception anyway.

lurker, I dismissed the example for the reasons I stated. It doesn't fit because it wasn't an example of what raven said, i.e., a legitimate discussion about race, etc., resulting in an accusation of racism. The media reported it precisely because a man lost his job for something he shouldn't have lost his job for. It was news. The media didn't accuse him of racism. Read your own links, for Christ's sake. Everyone agrees, liberal and conservative alike, black and white alike, that it was a mistake for him to lose his job due to an inaccurate accusation of racism. The media made a big stink about it. He was rehired. Not only is this not an example of what raven described, it's not even an example of what you think it is. It is an example of the media exposing a preposterous injury to a man who correctly used the word niggardly, and, as a result of the media, the wrong was righted. Don't blame me if you give a bad example and I point that out. If you don't think it is a bad example, then explain HOW it is a good example; don't just make an empty claim.

I don't see how anthropogenic is any more (or less) scientific or any more (or less) precise than man-made. It is just ancient greek for man-made. They mean EXACTLY the same thing. Again, this has nothing to do with being conservative. In fact, I think most climatologists are probably liberal and they use this silly term. I poke fun at them for doing so. I poke fun at non-scientists for following suit. It has nothing to do with being "not pleased." Again, I was showing an alternative example of raven's complaint that "historic" was used instead of "man-made" in one scenario. The example I used was of a euphemism for the very same word in another scenario, in this instance, the very website we are chatting on. I'm not trying to twist anything at all. Maybe I should have suggested that raven's guide call it an anthropogenic lake. Maybe that would have been funnier. Maybe then you would have understood the joke.

I think I do a pretty good and pretty careful job of arguing my opinions on their merits, not according to whether or not they are perceived to be liberal or conservative by me or by anyone else. If, to you, that is the same as "insist[ing] on being right about everything," then we are at a standstill and should probably never try to discuss anything that we don't agree on from the start.

I don't know if it's what raven meant, but I'm pretty sure that it is exactly an example of what David Blue meant. It's someone's innocent comments being misconstrued as racism. I suppose that you could make an argument that it wasn't MySpace or FaceBoook, but I think the larger point still stands.

Thanks for noting that you were making a bad joke WRT WoC and anthropogenic global warming. It's interesting that your third visit to the topic is the first time that humor was even mentioned. There's no harm in admitting it was a throw-away line. No big whoop.

Yes, I agree. You are always careful in your phrasing of various versions of "your evidence is either irrelevant or doesn't meet my threshold of proof". I think we agree on this, and I even concede that it's a fine, internally consistent position. However, another approach might be more interesting to we lurkers.

lurker, you interpreted me correctly.

Wow...all this discussion about shoulds and shouldn'ts with someone googling you, be it an employer or someone considering dating you, it's all the same and you are looking at it upside down if you ask me. (which of course you didn't) Anyway, the internet is public information, period. If you don't want something about your character or beliefs to be in the public domain, dont say, write or display photos of it in the public domain. It isn't anybody else's fault that it is out there, but yours, and I don't see any acknowledgement of that here. Employers make subjective decisions all time and can be turned off by the color of the tie you are wearing in your interview, which is not fair, but a fact of life. However, what is on the internet, especially facebook and myspace, was your choice to put there and is fair game for anyone who knows how to look at it. The world would be a better place if humans could just learn to take responsibility for their own behavior instead of blaming others for calling them on it
For instance, 4 times a year, I get to work at an event called the Undie Run at UCLA. Students in their teensiest G strings get drunk and run through the streets. Lots of people come to watch and take pictures, many of whom have nothing to do with the UC. These pictures invariably end up on the internet. I always think to myself as I observe this that when these young men and women run for congress, this is going to be a bit embarrassing. The bottom line is, though, that they chose to participate and no one else will be to blame when those photos emerge at a later date.

TK is right as a recommendation to individuals. Anything you put on the Internet, that isn't behind some kind of security fencing, can be assumed to be publicly available information.

Most people don't quite get that, because most people are unsophisticated technologically - as a great book (The Inmates are Running the Asylum) put it, they just want to sit down and get out in Florida, without having to learn to fly the plane. Awareness will come in time, but there will be visible, publicized casualties before the concept is internalized in a widespread way.

Having said that, corporations also have responsibilities, both at a legal level and at a moral/practical level.

Those legal responsibilities include certain questions one may not ask applicants - often the very things social networking sites tend to gather people for. It remains to be seen whether the legal restrictions will become a practical fiction in the face of these public sites, or whether they will serve to restrict corporate use of social networking (& even dating sites like Match.com, is my bet) as a tool for candidate research.

That, too, will be determined by the presence or absence of public casualties - via lawsuits, and possibly via backlash against discovered abuses in the very forums and blogs the corporations are trolling. This is the practical responsibility to safeguard the corporation's interests.

One way to do so is by avoiding sources whose information cannot be trusted to be accurate, or even about the right target. As opposed to a resume, which has known provenance. Not to mention the broader consideration of reputation in a networked world, which works both ways.

A Facebook group of "Stop CORP's Invasion of Applicants' Personal Lives" that comes up prominently when the company name is searched, won't help recruiting. Or sales. And it will be very, very difficult to ever get rid of once it's there. But it's very possible if some idiot in HR starts asking questions that demonstrate familiarity with things that aren't one one's resume, and an applicant takes offense.

Hmmm, so you make it not okay for "coporations" whom we assume are faceless dehumanized entities to search the internet for information on an applicant and how do you enforce it? Besides the fact that many corporations are just family businesses operated by regular people like you and me, who are just trying to limit the krap shoot involved in hiring people who will be honest, hardworking and trustworthy employees. It makes no sense. It is up to individuals to keep their private lives private or not. Their choice, their consequences to deal with. You cannot regulate public information without interfering with some basic freedoms.
You cannot keep employers from making subjective judgements about potential employees because the employers or the HR people are still people. Humans. Public. Citizens. Anthropoids, whatever. It still comes down to taking responsibility for your actions and not expecting big brother to protect you from your choices.

One distinction between Joe's circumstance and others is that his business is the written word. If his HR folks google an applicant for a writing position they are fairly likely to discover things their target has written. When hiring a wordsmith that is a useful and appropriate test. When one hires a welder or a floor-guy it seems less relevant.