Storying the digital professional: how online screening shifts the primary site and authorship of workers’ career stories

ABSTRACT

Employers’ use of online information increases the communicative demands and complexity of employability. For employers, gathering online information for personnel selection—a process called cybervetting—supplements or augments existing information acquisition processes. For workers, cybervetting’s extractive processes require considering potential and possible career stories employers might construct. Workers increasingly need to engage in prospective and retrospective storying to communicate and maintain employability and employment. Drawing on exemplars from employers’ reports, this essay highlights: (a) how employers report assembling and making sense of workers’ information during personnel selection; (b) the limitations of existing employability strategies; as well as (c) the increased and unequally distributed uncertainty and risk; and (d) the associated and different work expected of workers as the primary site and authorship of career stories shift.

KEYWORDS:

• Career
• employability
• cybervetting
• online screening
• personnel selection
• antenarrative
• narrative
• storying
• abduction
• abductive analysis
• hiring
• social media
• new media

Notes

An earlier version of this paper received a top paper award at the 2013 National Communication Association Annual Convention.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported in part by grants from the Purdue University graduate school and The University of Texas at Austin.