Skip to main content

Your employer may know if you're quitting before you say so, thanks to Jobrate

A person browsing a job search site on a laptop.
georgejmclittle/123RF
We’ve all gotten to that point: sitting at our current job, frustrated — so we decide to start searching for another. While you might be trying to hide it, that might soon be much more difficult thanks to a startup called Joberate.

The company’s algorithms look through publicly available social information on you to figure out whether you’re looking for a job or not. It might look through what you’ve followed on Twitter or liked on Facebook, or perhaps look for clues in your publicly available browsing history (resume writing tips or searches through company profiles, for example).

Related Videos

From there it will assign you what Joberate calls a J-Score: essentially a proprietary numerical figure that estimates the likelihood that you’re searching for another job. And your current employer would love to have this information, for obvious reasons.

Joberate says that its efforts are aimed at making resignations less of a shock. The company’s CEO Michael Beygelman made clear in an interview with the Washington Post that it is in no way violating user privacy by attempting to peer into private accounts. That said, if there’s anything public about you, from social media to elsewhere — Joberate is looking through it.

On the one hand, an employer could be using Joberate’s J-Scores to poach talent from competitors by monitoring the job search activities of those firms’ employees. That could land you a job before you’d even really start the application process. On the other hand, it could be used against you by your current employer, too.

Imagine your employer knowing you’re at least testing the waters for new employment elsewhere. This could prevent you from advancing — even if you don’t end up following through — or put quite the target on your back. While those types of uses could run afoul of employment laws in some states, nothing is preventing your employer from acquiring this information.

All of it seems creepy, too, to the point where it even has some human relations professionals leery of using it. “I have had a lot of conversations about whether it’s creepy or not,” talent consulting firm Hudson America CEO Lori Hock told the Post. Hock also said that such tracking has been hotly debated at HR conferences, although she does expect some of her company’s clients to start using Joberate or other similar services.

Beygelman obviously discounts these concerns, pointing to potential positive uses. A employee that is looking for advancement elsewhere could be targeted for promotion from within, or problem managers and supervisors could be sniffed out merely by taking a look at whether there is a higher rate of job searching happening among the employees they control.

He also added most companies are not using Joberate at the employee level, and instead use it to focus on overall trends to correct potential employment issues. In the end, within three to five years, these types of services could replace the traditional “employee satisfaction” surveys.

I think it’s just a matter of time before employees start to feel more comfortable with it,” he concluded.

Editors' Recommendations

Having trouble accessing your Instagram account? You’re not alone
Instagram being used on an iPhone.

Instagram appears to be down right now, but the glitch many users are reporting is an odd one. It's not just that users are having trouble accessing the popular photo- and video-sharing app, but they're also having trouble accessing their own accounts and have reported being hit with account suspension notices.

On Monday morning, the apparent Instagram outage was reported by users on Twitter and on Downdetector. Both sites included numerous reports saying that users suddenly lost access to their IG accounts and were given account suspension notices.

Read more
Instagram and Facebook down? You’re not alone
Turned on smartphone with Instagram app icon on its screen.

Thursday morning. The work week is almost over, the weekend is just around the corner ... and that also apparently means that you can't use Instagram or Facebook. At the time of publication on Thursday, October 27, both Instagram and Facebook appear to be down.

Looking at Down Detector, reports for the outage spiked around 9:40 a.m. with 2,000+ reports. For Facebook, 65% of users are having issues with the website, another 29% are having problems with the app, and 6% are reporting issues with their feed/timeline.

Read more
YouTube is rolling out handles. Here’s what you need to know
The red and white YouTube logo on a phone screen. The phone is on a white background.

YouTube recently announced that it would be rolling out handles for YouTube channels. Whether you've just heard about them or you already got an email from YouTube saying it's time to choose one, you're probably wondering what they are and how they're different from YouTube channel names.

In this guide, we'll go over what a YouTube handle is and answer a few questions about them so you can better understand what they are and be better prepared to choose one when it's rolled out to you.

Read more