Checking out the Talent!

It seems more and more companies are now using search engines such as Google and Yahoo, as well as the social networking sites such as MySpace, LinkedIn, Facebook, Friends Reunited, YouTube and Blogs to carry out searches on prospective employees prior to interviews. Obviously a great idea!!

Two questions I have linked to this ‘new’ type of interview research:

Why don’t candidates do the same? They obviously know who will be interviewing them (they should do anyway!), so as a part of the interview / company research shouldn’t they just do the same and search across the same type of sites?
With all the worry within companies regarding losing talented employees to the marketplace, would it not be prudent of managers to conduct some searching of their own - keeping an eye on their key team members to make sure they are not discontented and looking for other opportunities.

Now all of you who have just drawn in a breath, and are about to quote the words ‘big brother’ to me, my answer is simple - tough!! as there is absolutely nothing you can do about it, so just adopt the process like everyone else.