How Signing Up On Job Portals Leads to Loss of Data Privacy?

Job portals play a significant role in the early stages of one's career as these portals enable freshers and job seekers to find the right opportunities and build their careers. These job portals also play a decisive role in career growth and opportunities for experienced professionals. For any individual in the corporate world has an account with the top job portals of the country is a must. But have we ever thought about how our data is being misused or can be misused by the users of these job portals? Let’s understand the problem in detail.

Firstly creating an employer account on a job portal is extremely easy, all you need is a registered legal entity with a GST certificate. It doesn’t matter whether you are really hiring, whether you are a legit business or not. Once the account is created and the so-called employer has purchased a database (Resume/CV database) they have access to any profile registered on the job portal and their personal details. In addition to employers, third-party recruiters also have access to the job portal's database. While some recruiters are genuine and use the data responsibly, others may misuse the data to spam candidates with irrelevant job offers or sell the data to other parties.

A jobseekers profile/CV/resume has some of the most confidential information of an individual i.e. name, email address, phone number, date of birth, sex, education, marital status, work experience, salary, and other details relevant to your job search. Getting unsolicited access to such confidential information without individuals' consent can be outrightly dangerous. Imagine someone having your number, knows where you live, how much you earn, are you married or not, doesn’t this thought trigger an instant panic in your mind?

Access to such confidential information can be detrimental. It can lead to cases of abuse, racism, harassment, and much worse than one can imagine. There have been cases in the past where people have been scammed on the pretext of job calls or have risked their lives and safety by going for fake in-person interviews.

Not to forget how we all have experienced getting random Insurance, Investment, and Property sales calls without having shared our numbers anywhere, how are these people getting our contact number or know where we live and precisely pitch us about new projects that are within our vicinity, how do these people know how much our income is and accordingly pitch our relevant products.

There is a strong need for government to intervene and bring a solid data privacy policy in India safeguarding the interest of the users. Meanwhile, the job portals should also relook at their user journeys and processes and make sharing of all confidential information consent based i.e. information to be shared only on the consent of the user (jobseeker) whether they would be interested in sharing their information with the businesses/companies registered on these job portals.

The job portals need to relook at the onboarding and verification process of the businesses/companies and seek much more information and have thorough research before providing them access to their user (jobseekers) database.

In summary, while job portals offer significant benefits for job seekers, they also pose a risk to personal data privacy. To address these challenges, job portals must take steps to ensure that personal data is protected and that they are adhering to applicable data privacy laws.

The article has been written by Darshan Vyas, Founder, InRadius Technologies