Beyond the resume: perceptions of cybervetting among employees in Nigeria

Abstract

Cybervetting, the practice of evaluating job candidates based on their online presence, has become a prominent component of global recruitment. However, existing research is heavily Western-centric, leaving a critical gap in understanding how employees in the Global South, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, interpret and experience these digital screening practices. This qualitative study explores how Nigerian employees perceive cybervetting, the underlying factors influencing their views, and how these interpretations are shaped by cultural dimensions as conceptualized in Geert Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Theory. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 14 Nigerian professionals from diverse industries, the findings reveal that employees perceive cybervetting as an extension of organizational control that collapses personal-professional boundaries, disrupts contextual privacy, and introduces a high risk of misjudgment. Employees do not uniformly accept or reject the practice; instead, they actively negotiate its legitimacy based on platform type, job relevance, and transparency. Furthermore, the study identifies that an employee's acceptance is heavily structured by economic positioning, the broader institutional normalization of data access in Nigeria, and moral framings of personal responsibility. Through a cultural lens, the research indicates that while a collectivist orientation can legitimize cybervetting as a means of protecting organizational reputation, high power distance does not translate into unconditional acceptance of employer surveillance. Ultimately, the study introduces the theoretical concept of "pragmatic privacy compliance," illustrating how individuals may outwardly comply with privacy-invasive practices due to economic and structural pressures while internally resisting them. These insights offer significant implications for employees and job applicants, as well as human resources practitioners and policymakers, aiming to design fair, transparent, and ethically grounded cybervetting policies.