Cybervetting, Online Information, and Personnel Selection

This study examines employers’ and workers’ sensemaking about cybervetting—employers’ use of online information for personnel selection. Analysis of 89 employer and applicant interviews suggest a shift in the social contract—the implicit expectations for how personnel selection and employment relationships should work. Results suggest an extension of new proactive transparency expectations from organizations to workers, the implicit acceptance of which points to the emergence of a digital social contract. The digital social contract prescribes normative expectations for workers’ digital visibility, thereby extending the times and contexts within which employment evaluations and career management occur. Using a communicative perspective to address research gaps on everyday ethics, practices, and technologies of personnel selection, contributions include introducing and explicating the digital social contract, documenting the extension of new transparency expectations to individuals, and explicating ethical and practical implications of new technologies and information visibility on contemporary personnel selection.