“Give us your social networking site passwords”: Implications for personnel selection and personality

•Employers are asking job applicants for their social network site passwords.•This request may do more harm than good.•More than half of the applicant pool could be lost.•Adverse impact may occur.•Any potential gains in personality scores may have minimal impact on job performance.

Recently, employers have begun asking applicants for their social networking site (SNS) password to access private information that could be job-relevant. However, the effect that this request can have on an organization’s selection process and its selection of individual applicant traits has not been previously examined. Findings from the current study of 892 employed or previously-employed participants suggested that 57.87% of the sample would refuse the password request, thereby removing themselves from the applicant pool. Such a large reduction in the applicant pool could necessitate a drastic decrease in cutoff scores on subsequent pre-employment tests, which would lower workforce productivity and personnel selection utility. In addition, the SNS password request caused adverse impact for several minority groups, and affected the personality scores of the remaining applicant pool.