Ask and you shall receive?

STERLING – With the rapid advance of technology and social media, businesses and companies are having to quickly adapt and change their policies for the use of sites such as Facebook.

Recently, I read an article that first reported an instance of a prospective employee being asked by an interviewer for the applicant's Faceobook user name and password to log in.

The idea being: It's an opportunity for an employer to see whether anything suspicious or even interesting might pop up.

I was surprised to hear of this situation. I had not encountered such a policy in my experience.

As I read more and more about this, I was interested to see whether this was happening locally. It prompted me to begin asking questions and trying to discover whether any local employers were doing this in interviews.

I spoke with Rachel Untz, the president of the Rock River Human Resources Professional Organization.

She told me a lot of interesting things. Stay tuned to our Saturday edition of SV Weekend to find out what she and others had to say about the policy.

One of the facts she told me had to do with how difficult it is for companies to have a social media policy.

"A lot of employers are scared of it because they don't know how to use it or manage it," she said.

For example, if a company has a policy that states social media shouldn't be used during work, companies have to prove that they can uphold that.

That can be very difficult to do.

"If something were to happen where an employee was using it, and an employer goes to fire them for it ... [they] could have some issues [if] they didn't enforce it every time the same way," she said.

Others told me such a policy has no place in the world of human resources.

Untz said she will have a speaker address her group on social media in late April. It's something her organization is talking about and will continue to do so.

It's interesting to see how quickly people responded to the first word that this information was being asked for.

What do you think? Is this information that should be readily given when asked for? Let me know.

Sauk Valley Media reporter Kiran Sood covers government and happenings in Sterling and Rock Falls. She can be reached at ksood@saukvalley.com or at 800-798-4085, ext. 529.