Hedenus, Anna, and Christel Backman. 2017. Explaining the Data Double: Confessions and Self- Examinations in Job Recruitments. Surveillance & Society 15(5): 640-654. http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/surveillance-and-society/index| ISSN: 1477-7487 © The author(s), 2017 | Licensed to the Surveillance Studies Network under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives license. Anna Hedenus Department of Sociology and Work Science University of Gothenburg, Sweden anna.hedenus@gu.se Christel Backman Department of Sociology and Work Science University of Gothenburg, Sweden christel.backman@gu.se Abstract The practice of cybervetting—i.e., online background checks of a jobseeker’s ‘data double’—is considered to be a valuable tool in the recruitment process by an increasing amount of employers. As a consequence, jobseekers lose some control over what aspects of their past, personal interests or private life they will share with the employer. Moreover, jobseekers are expected to confess, explain and contextualize unfavorable information about them if they want to be perceived as employable. This study aims to show how cybervetting recruiters encourage and anticipate such confessions, and use the outcomes to evaluate jobseekers’ honesty and capacity for self-reflection. The analysis is based on qualitative interviews with 36 Swedish human resource professionals, hiring managers and employers, and guided by Foucault’s theoretical work on self-examinations, along with the confessional culture and its related concepts. We argue that confessions about information found on the internet are an important factor of what we label ‘online employability’: jobseekers’ capability to sanitize, keep track of and explain their data doubles. Hence, as the recruiter can examine a jobseeker’s private spheres, cybervetting is a surveillance practice with direct consequences on recruitment as well as clear effects on jobseekers’ self-examinations and interactions with human resources personnel. Introduction Because of the commonly held assumption that jobseekers will withhold any information that may negatively affect their employment possibilities, a recruitment process usually involves the identification of additional references and information from sources other than the candidate (cf. Hedricks, Robie, and Oswald 2013). The digitalization of society, which causes us to leave behind digital traces, has favored employers, as they can now easily screen potential employees and survey current workers. One example of this development is ‘cybervetting’ (Berkelaar 2010), the practice of checking a jobseeker’s ‘data double’, i.e., information about a person that can be found online. An increasing number of employers consider cybervetting to be a valuable tool in the recruitment process. Employers’ suspiciousness towards the authenticity of jobseekers’ self-presentations is the primary motive for cybervetting, along with a need for more information than was provided by the jobseeker, as well as pure curiosity (Berkelaar 2010; Berkelaar and Buzzanell 2015; Kotamraju, Ben Allouch, and van Wingerden 2014). In the US, the fear of lawsuits and a need for sufficient due diligence constitute further justification for conducting online background checks. The eventual findings from these online searches Article Explaining the Data Double: Confessions and Self-Examinations in Job Recruitments