Applying for a job asks for a lot of data, and what if you aren’t hired? Be cautious with what you provide, especially sensitive information, when voluntarily applying for jobs. Follow a few of these privacy tips to ensure a few steps towards your personal identity.
Paper Applications or Resume
Bars, restaurants or retail establishments tend to have a standard paper application. These are usually double sided with a small amount of space to enter information. It may ask for your name, address, past experience where and when you attended school.
Don’t Give:
- Social Security Number
- Physical Address
- Exact Date of Birth
- Graduation Date
Why?
These papers can get left lying around during the blur of business. Office doors could be left open, stacks of papers left on shelves and possibly near customers’ reach in plenty of unsecured areas.
Small Online Help Wanted Sites and Online applications
Finding a job online is becoming increasingly popular. The cost to post an AD is minimal or more often free. Entries vary from a paragraph to descriptive sought after skills. Many times they ask for an email response with your qualifications, including a resume.
Large well established companies post their job openings through their company website. They have invested in a Human Resource department who gain strict professional training to assure they are abiding by legal protocols. However, this does not guarantee mistakes don’t happen.
Don’t Give:
- Social Security Number
- Physical Address
- Exact Date of Birth
- Marital or Dependence Status
- Graduation Date
- Photo
- Social media links
Why:
Free classified entries are seldom quality control checked for validity. Hackers and spammers may pose fake ads for the purpose of gaining data or reply to send you unrelated spam emails. If the Ad doesn’t list a phone number, company name, or any other way to reach them, be weary.
Large companies do not need your Social Security Number until they have decided to hire you to file your own tax information.
Some may ask for it for additional background checks such as criminal or credit history. However, they should only ask this when they become more interested in you, after reviewing your initial information.
Large companies may also apply: Employment check, references, education check, drug test, personality tests, comprehension tests, skills application tests and more. Provide data at your own risk.
Anything submitted online is not always safe.
What they find anyways:
Based on information provided, through deductive reasoning, managers can determine or assume age, marital, health status, dependent status, social class and more. This information can be figured out by graduation date, neigborhood, length of experience, specialty studies and more.
Both the prospective employee and employer both seek a compatible business relationship. In my opinion, once a company is interested in an applicant based on skills, tthey may move to the next step of asking for more data. In today’s high tech world people are easier to look up online. Pieces of our lives are scattered, published by a few key online word searches.
LendaHandYu 