[raganwald]

Both of the things you mention are directly work-related. Can you give some other examples of " things on the public Internet that reflects poorly on the candidate?"

For example, does posting something about anti-semitism reflect poorly on a candidate? How about a candidate that makes strong statements about the correlation between race and IQ?

[statictype]

Those kinds of social issues are relevant for two reasons.

1) If the candidate has to work on a team with others, then he has to get along with the team - or at the very least, the chemistry shouldn't be bad enough to affect performance.

2)I think it's perfectly acceptable to reject someone because you don't consider him to be morally upstanding. The second statement about correlating race and IQ is a bit ambiguous and subjective, but if, say the candidate was philosophically in favor of lynching and ethnic genocide, then I wouldn't care how good a hacker he is, I wouldn't feel right hiring him.

Posting race\IQ issue wouldn't, in my opinion, reflect poorly on the candidate even though I don't necessarily agree with it. On the other hand, posting anti-semitic remarks probably would reflect poorly, depending on how they were phrased and the context (is it just pure hate or mere opposition to certain political stances...)

[falien]

Whether they reflect poorly or not is a matter of personal philosophy. If I was face with someone who was blatantly racist, it would reflect poorly on their suitability for a job where they to interact with people who would take offense to such views. For such things, a decision would depend on how negative I anticipated that interaction to be. This is no different from not hiring someone based on their poor social skills during an interview. It is in public and they must expect it to be scrutinized and associated with them.