Signal S04

Mentions of other job offers

Needs human decision

The vendor says: “Posts celebrating offers from other companies mean the candidate is unlikely to join.”

Moves the score by up to −8 pointsFeeds: reliability

The six questions

1. Is it related to the job?
Competing offers do affect joining, so the signal has some business relevance.
Concern
2. Does it stand in for who someone is?
No link found to a personal characteristic.
Pass
3. Is it the right person?
Usually self-authored posts.
Pass
4. Did the candidate publish it, and would they expect an employer to use it this way?
Shared with friends and family.
Concern
5. Does it work equally for everyone?
Tier-1 campus candidates receive and post about more offers, so they are penalised more often.
Concern
6. Is there a less intrusive way?
A partial alternative exists: A joining-confirmation conversation at offer stage, plus joining incentives.
Concern

Rule applied

If a signal raises an open legal question, send it to a human decision-maker before any use.

Conditions for any use

Do not use until the Data Protection Officer and legal counsel have answered the open legal question.
Prefer the alternative where practical: A joining-confirmation conversation at offer stage, plus joining incentives.
Use only content the candidate published themselves; never content others posted or tagged.
Absence of content must be treated as neutral, never as a negative.
Must not be scored automatically; a trained person decides whether a specific item is relevant.
Tell candidates in the application notice that this check is made, and let them respond to any adverse finding.

Open legal question: handed to people

Whether reading candidates' posts about competing employers is covered by the DPDP publicly-available exemption, and whether penalising a candidate for considering other offers is acceptable practice for Kestrel.

Evidence

DPDP Act 2023, s.3(c)(ii): publicly available personal dataIndian law
The Act does not apply to personal data that the person it relates to has made, or caused to be made, publicly available, or that someone is legally obliged to publish.
DPDP Act 2023, s.7(i): legitimate use for employment purposesIndian law
An employer may process personal data without consent 'for the purposes of employment' or to safeguard itself from loss or liability, with examples such as preventing corporate espionage and protecting trade secrets.
K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India: privacy and proportionalityIndian law
The Supreme Court held privacy to be a fundamental right and applied a proportionality test to intrusions: a legitimate aim, a rational connection to it, no less restrictive means that would work, and a fair balance between the aim and the intrusion.