LinkedIn preferred by hiring managers.

Some employers research job candidates' credentials on social media sites: they also sometimes post praise of employees on these sites. However, as is explained in the following article, employers need to be careful about posting such praise because employees have cited such postings as the basis for a defamation or wrongful termination suit.

In the hiring process, employers prefer to use LinkedIn to Facebook and Twitter. This was the finding of Jump Start Social Media's (www.jumpstartsocialmedia.com/) survey of 100 hiring managers at small, midsize, and large companies on how social media are being used in the hiring process. Jump Start Social Media is a service of Digital Brand Expressions (www.digitalbrandexpressions.com/), which helps professionals adopt social media for personal brand management.

Although 75% of hiring managers check LinkedIn to research the credentials of job candidates, only 48% use Facebook and 26% use Twitter to research candidates before making a job offer. Commenting on this finding, Veronica Fielding, president of Digital Brand Expressions and Jump Start Social Media, said, "Because LinkedIn is the most professionally oriented of the three, it tends to attract hiring managers who are doing due diligence."

Of the hiring managers surveyed, 66% visit LinkedIn, 23% visit Facebook, and 16% visit Twitter to find candidates to fill openings.

Caveat employer

In our current economy, many people are being forced out of work. For employers, a dilemma may arise because they must explain employees' departures without harming their reputations. Consequently, lawyers are advising employers to be cautious about praising employees highly on social media sites. Eventually, highly praised employees who are terminated because of job performance issues may initiate a wrongful termination lawsuit, claiming they were let go because of discrimination or harassment. To support their claims, employees may be able to cite their employer's praise of their performance on one of the social media sites, on blogs, or in e-mails as evidence of their wrongful termination.

Even information about an employee that is true but negative may be used as evidence of defamation. The case Noonan v. Staples, Inc., 539 F.3d 1 (1st Cir. 2008), arose from an e-mail memo sent to approximately 1,500 Staples employees. The purpose of the e-mail was to inform employees that a Staples manager was terminated because he did not comply with the company's travel and...