Many companies that recruit on college campuses have been using search engines like Google and Yahoo to conduct background checks on seniors looking for their first job. But now, college career counselors and other experts say, some recruiters are looking up applicants on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Xanga and Friendster, where college students often post risqué or teasing photographs and provocative comments about drinking, recreational drug use and sexual exploits in what some mistakenly believe is relative privacy.
When viewed by corporate recruiters or admissions officials at graduate and professional schools, such pages can make students look immature and unprofessional, at best.
“It’s a growing phenomenon,” said Michael Sciola, director of the career resource center at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. “There are lots of employers that Google. Now they’ve taken the next step.”
At New York University, recruiters from about 30 companies told career counselors that they were looking at the sites, said Trudy G. Steinfeld, executive director of the center for career development.
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One Comment to
“For Some, Online Persona Undermines a Résumé”
I remember attending a lecture about just this issue after I was hired as a student teacher by the university I presently attend. In fact, not only did they mention what your article speaks of, e.g., employers using MySpace, Facebook, etc. to check-up on job candidates, but also that they would fire any university employees that had pictures posted on these websites that were in clear violation of the rules and standards they set out. So, for example, if I were to have an image of myself drinking unsafely then those were grounds for my immediate termination.
I’ve also heard that many companies are now creating off-site archives of these online meeting places that they can scan for a name when they receive it on an application. If this is so then you truly are not safe from these searches even if you take your personas down when applying for a job.
While I can see the relevance in companies trying to get more information about their potential employees, I honestly feel that going this far is a clear invasion of privacy that definitely crosses the line between the life you live at work and the life you choose to live in the comfort of your own home. In my opinion, employers should not hold their employees to the same standards out of the workplace as they do inside.
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Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 12 Jun 2006
