According to a recent study, a vast majority of human resource recruiters search online to learn more about prospective applicants. And of those, the majority eliminates applicants from consideration if they find anything circumspect on social networking sites. So, while some studies suggest that social networking sites can even the technological playing field for some, exercising poor judgment on these sites can actually derail one’s career.
A San Jose Examiner report found these results from an ExucuNet annual job search and recruiting survey. The Survey polled 100 executive recruiters and found that nearly 85% of job recruiters and executives use search engines to learn more about job applicants and over twice as many applicants were eliminated from job contention because of content they found posted by the applicant on their personal MySpace or Facebook page. A 200% increase from the 2005 study.
Steven Rothberg, founder of CollegeRecruiter.com, advises college students to exercise better judgement while managing their online presence. “As a rule of thumb, do not post any information online anywhere unless you would feel comfortable showing it to your grandmother,” Rothberg cautions. He advises that students cleans their pages of risque photos, bragging stories of sexual conquests, or controversial opinions that could end up being a red flag to prospective employers. He also cautions against blog posts complaining about previous job experiences as they indicate to recruiters how you may handle your future employment.”
Dave Option, chief executive officer and founder of ExecuNet agrees. He states that a few moments of emotional midjudgement can derail your career dreams for the rest of your life. Or at least a large portion of it. “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. Anyone looking for employment needs to keep in mind that recruiters will go to a computer long before they go to a telephone.”
And what’s harder is, even if you cleanse your online presence of any questionable content, that doesn’t mean it’s gone forever. Archive sites like the Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org/index.php) use automatic web-bot to archive sites all over the web, and often without the user’s permission. The result is that while users have succeeded in cleansing their current online presence, the questionable content is never really gone as long as computer savvy recruiters know exactly where to look. So, it’s often a good idea to contact these sites and request that they block access to archived material which you haven’t given your permission to store.
In the end, while using the Internet as a tool of free expression can be liberating, it’s consequences can often follow users who post potentially controversial or racey content which may prove embarrassing to companies or even make them legally liable. And simply put, most employers simply won’t take the chance, no matter how qualified an applicant may be.
