The increased use of social networking sites such as Facebook as a recruitment tool has again been called into question in a new report published by the ICO (Information Commissioner's Office).

'The ICO (Information Commissioner's Office) has warned that millions of young people could be jeopardising their future careers by revealing too
much about themselves on social networking sites.'

As an increasing number of employers are turning to the Internet as a recruitment tool, should people be more vigilant about the information they reveal? Why do young people use social networking sites in the first place? The majority of them, at least to start with, join these sites as a means of extending their network of friends, chatting to people with similar
interests. But just how much information should they reveal about themselves? The personal details that attract friends aren't necessarily the same as those that attract potential employers.

Should we as employers even be using these tools to recruit potential employees? True they're a great way to canvas for possible candidates. But do we have the right to be intrusive? Surely if people post personal
information on social networking sites, and make that information public, they're doing so because they WANT others to read it.

The Facebook website states 'At Facebook, we believe you should have control over your information and who sees it. So in addition to the basic visibility rules - only your friends and people in your networks can see your profile - we also give you granular control over the information you post to the site.' Should we in fact simply be educating social network users to utilise their privacy settings.

There are two inescapable facts concerning information that everyone is going to have to come to terms with. Published information belongs to the
public and private information belongs to private individuals.

The Information Commissioner is currently in the process of drafting guidance for individuals who are using or thinking of using social networking sites. This guidance will be published in the coming months, once comments have been received from the social networking sites involved.

It will be interesting to read the commissioner's guidance and see what effect, if any, that guidance has on the growing use of social networking sites in the recruitment industry.

Societe Generale posts 4th-quarter loss of $4.91 billion after trading fraud
was the headline in the Star Tribune in the wake of the $7 billion trading
scandal. The French bank took a 4.9 billion euro ($7.18 billion) hit closing
the unauthorized positions of futures trader Jerome Kerviel, who is being
held in a Paris prison and has been questioned by investigators for a third
time.

An internal report said bank officials failed to follow up on dozens of
warnings about questionable trades. The report commissioned by a committee
of three independent board members detailed 75 warnings signs in Kerviel's
exchanges, such as a trade with a maturity date on a Saturday or a missing
broker name. The signals weren't always flagged to superiors and "when the
hierarchy was warned, they didn't react," the report said.

Kerviel told investigators that he believes his bosses were well aware of
his risk taking but turned a blind eye as long as he earned money. "I can't
believe that my superiors were not aware of the amounts I was committing, it
is impossible to generate such profits with small positions," according to
excerpts of his police testimony published in Le Monde newspaper. Kerviel
also insisted that his top concern was "earning money for my bank. As long
as I was earning cash, the signs were not that worrisome," he said. "As long
as you earn money and it isn't too obvious, and it's convenient, nobody says
anything."

Nick Leeson, the rogue trader who brought down Barings Bank told the BBC
that he was not shocked that the latest fraud had taken place - only its
scale. "Rogue trading is probably a daily occurrence within the financial
markets," he said.

This case obviously raises certain questions from a recruitment consultant's perspective:

If he had gone through the executive search and selection route would a consultant have spotted this dangerous aspect of his character during the interview?

We've read that this guy is smart and because he had worked in the back office he knew how to cover his tracks, but he was also a Walter Mitty character and was provided with counsellors by the bank.

"Sometimes people don't know the size of what they are getting into," Jean-Pierre Mustier, the head of the investment banking arm, said. The bank said it was baffled as to his "irrational" motives. But there is a suggestion that he did it to prove the system could be broken.

Should we be making more use of personality profiling during the recruitment process?

As a recruiter, I am not keen on this approach as it creates obstacles to recruiting talented people. How many of us do not have certain personality/behaviour defaults that differentiate us from the norm? Often
the most talented people are on the extreme side of thinking. Somehow we need a way to separate these from the seriously deluded.

How could he have been managed/controlled better?

I personally think some products are so new and complex that the risk management teams are always lagging behind. Just like drug testing in sports, some get caught out but many are always 1 step ahead.

What are the answers? How can we avoid situations like this happening again?

As ever we'd welcome your comments and thoughts.