Can employers use social media for employment discrimination?

You send in your resume and cover letter for a position you know you are qualified for. Your cover letter looks great and all the formatting is perfect – everything about it is perfect. Yet you don’t get an interview. Why?

If you are getting up there in years, could it be age discrimination? Many people would dismiss this notion out of hand because you didn’t put your age on the resume anywhere and how would they know? Social media.

How Are Employers Doing This?

It is quite simple. They look into your various social media accounts: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. By looking through the various posts it is pretty simple to glean some basic information about you, your age in particular. According to ProPublica, this is not an uncommon occurrence.

What Can You Do About It?

The difficulty of an age discrimination claim of this kind is finding proof. How can we possibly prove that your prospective employer used social media to discriminate against you based on your age?

However, although this is a difficult endeavor, it is not impossible. The best thing to do is talk to an attorney who focuses on handling complicated employment law cases like this. Whether or not you have a winning claim would have to be a individualized decision, since so much would depend on the specific facts of your case.