An online social network is a community of people tied together by a common element - like a professional association, an educational institution, a shared interest or friendship.

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Remember the corner payphone? My, how communication methods have changed! Many news items are written daily about the rapid changes occurring among social networking sites. Communication on the web has few controls. Sure, you can communicate with nearly anyone about anything at anytime almost anywhere. However, without controls, your agency might find itself in possession of personal information about potential employees that is illegal to ask. Too much information today can become evidence tomorrow.

Companies are increasingly entering into the world of advancing web and communications' technologies to recruit top talent. Recruiters from major companies, such as Target, Cosco, GE, and Microsoft now have profiles on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. LinkedIn, designed to enable people to maximize career contacts, is all the rage among recruiters, and more than doubled its membership — from 8 million to 17 million — in less than a year, according to Jessica Guynn, writing for the Los Angeles Times.

Can a social networking site be all things to all people? Can it simultaneously be the place to meet friends, download music, play pirates versus ninjas, vote on various issues and recruit effectively? What will last? What will become good business and quality recruiting practice? What will lead to lawsuits? Since only time will tell, a few notes of caution are listed here:

• Always adhere to NC State government's merit-based recruiting standards and keep your organization above reproach. Certainly, the state must use the best available methods and technology to recruit high-performing employees. However, state employee screeners are bound by merit-based recruiting to screen on objective job related criteria.
• Establish guidelines for use. Involve input from Human Resources and your legal specialist to ensure adherence to employment laws and professional business standards.
• Choose your sites well; business sites are likely to be more focused on business than those with a less focused format.
• Keep up with the news about the sites you are using or considering. You can have a Google alert sent to your e-mail. Many Human Resources sites also address this subject.
• Stay away from information about a potential candidate's personal life. It is too late to give the information back once you know.
• When interviewing a candidate or checking a reference, one cannot ask about personal information and remain on solid legal ground. Moreover, if the topic veers away from job related information, wise interviewers steer it back to job and performance topics.

Knowledge of non-job related personal information can lead to charges of discrimination or pre-selection. Acquiring prohibited personal information, while illuminating, can open the organization to accusations that the merit-based recruiting process has not been followed. Additionally, the fact that a social network user reveals all kinds of personal information — some real and some fanciful — does not preclude the revealer from charging that their privacy has been violated by the business entity who acquired this knowledge by going too social on a social networking site.