Over the years I’ve written multiple posts about the importance of cleaning up your online image and, specifically, your Facebook profile.
When I first wrote about this topic in 2007, I found a study by the Ponemon Institute, a privacy think tank, reporting that 35 percent of hiring managers used Google to do online background checks on job candidates, and 23 percent admitted to looking people up on social networking sites. According to the survey, about one-third of those searches led to rejections.
By January 2010, a survey from Microsoft found that a whopping 79 percent of U.S. hiring managers have used the Internet to better assess applicants and 70 percent of employers have rejected a candidate because of information they found about that person online.
Last week things got a little scarier. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission gave approval to a company called Social Intelligence Corp, which keeps files of Facebook users’ posts as part of a background-checking service they offer to their customers for screening job applicants.
This means that even if you delete an embarrassing photo or raunchy wall post, the material could stay in your file for seven years, where a potential employer using Social Intelligence Corp’s services could access it.
Frankly, I’m not surprised we’ve gotten to this point. Social media is such a part of our daily lives that it was only a matter of time before even deleted material could be discovered.
That said, what concerns me about this new development is that it leaves no room for people to make mistakes, which we all do (especially when we’re in high school or college and first using Facebook). Do I think one mildly inappropriate party photo from sophomore year will sink your CEO chances? Probably not. But if your Facebook account is chock full of concerning behavior, comments and images that may hurt your chances of landing a job in the future. The good news is that you can take control of your online presence and avoid this possible fate.
Read the rest of this post in the Experis Career Center…
No comments:
Post a Comment