LinkedIn may be the go-to social media site for job hunters (and in-house counsel), but a number of users recently sued the company because they couldn’t get hired. David Gettings, Tim St. George and David Anthony of Troutman Sanders write that the job applicants sued for violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, based on the site’s “reference search” function.
The plaintiffs said that LinkedIn is essentially providing employers with a search functionality allowing them to see past jobs and potential references for the candidates. “The plaintiffs claimed that LinkedIn’s Reference Searches contained information that negatively impacted their respective job applications,” explain the authors. It was through characterizing the reference searches as a “consumer report” that they sued under the FCRA.
