A profile on the Web site Facebook could destroy your career faster than you could press delete.
“If you?ve got digital dirt, do what you do with all other dirt ? bury it,” said Steven Rothberg, founder of
CollegeRecruiter.com.
With more than 100 million visitors per month, MySpace is the most-trafficked Web site in the world ? followed by Facebook with 80 million active users, according to global Internet information tracker comScore.
Facebook and MySpace are social networking sites where users publish profiles in order to share photographs, links, videos and commentary.
And as the number of people with profiles on networking sites grow, it?s becoming a sorting tool for employers.
“As a rule of thumb, do not post any information online anywhere unless you would feel comfortable showing it to your favorite grandmother,” said Rothberg. “So no risque photos, no stories about sexual exploits or about doing an inadequate job for a previous employer.”
The majority of executive recruiters ? a whopping 83.2 percent ? use search engines to learn more about candidates, and nearly half of these recruiters have eliminated candidates because of something questionable they uncovered ? three times as many as in 2005, according to a recent survey of 100 executive recruiters conducted by ExecuNet, a job-search and recruiting network.
“If anyone posts things that are of poor taste on my page, I delete them,” said John Akchin, 27, a Stanford University graduate from Baltimore.
Still, many others appear to have little problem letting it all hang out with boasts of drinking and sex, nude photos and colorful language.
For Corey Gaber, 23, of the Baltimore-based Students Sharing Coalition, Facebook etiquette was never an issue until he entered the job market. “At that time, I took down a few pictures and sarcastic or potentially offensive interests off my profile,” he said.
“When it comes to managing your online image, you need to know that a couple of minutes of misjudgment can have a very, very long-term implication,” said Dave Opton, chief executive officer and founder of ExecuNet. “Anyone looking for employment needs to keep in mind that recruiters will go to a computer long before they go to a telephone.”
Factors in eliminating candidates range from criminal convictions, inappropriate pictures on MySpace or Facebook, hobbies listed such as “I like to drink,” and weird personal habits, according to the ExecuNet survey data.
“Ruling somebody out on that basis may not be fair,” said Opton. “But that could still influence a hiring decision when you?re looking at a bunch of candidates who are otherwise all on equal footing.”
