St. Paul, Minn. – Worried that potential employers might peruse postings at the Facebook website, Steve Lindgren used privacy settings to shut off access to his pictures and musings to all but a limited circle of friends.
His friends will see his favorite Homer Simpson quote, his love of PB&J sandwiches and photos of his travels and “random partying.” All college humor type of stuff, Lindgren says, but it’s still not anything he’d want an employer to see.
“I’m not ashamed of anything, but it would be easy to get a different perspective of who I am,” said the 22-year-old St. Cloud State University senior who is interviewing for finance jobs. “If I am directing it toward my friends, employers are probably not going to be too impressed with the profile.”
As more students and young job seekers turn to social networking sites such as MySpace, Friendster and Facebook to connect with friends and write about their personal lives, employers and recruiters are following right behind. They are tapping into Internet search engines to cull information about job candidates.
Job seekers have reason to worry. Some employers and recruiters are using the information to weed out candidates.
Three quarters of 102 executive recruiters surveyed last fall by ExecuNet said they use search engines to uncover information about job candidates. More than a quarter said they have eliminated candidates due to what they found on the Internet.
There’s an explosion in the amount of personal material being launched into cyberspace by people who seemingly have no qualms about revealing details of their sexual escapades or not- so-hidden desires. They’ll carry digital cameras to bars and parties and post photos of drunken friends to their Web pages and to those of their friends.
In a few years, Internet searches on job candidates will become even more commonplace, predicts Minneapolis employment attorney Tamara Olsen. She advises those who bare their souls and, um, other things online to consider the consequences.
“The Internet is like a billboard or painting on the side of a building,” said Olsen, who advises companies on electronic communication issues. “… Right now we are in a funny place where people are posting private things and they have no idea how public it really is.”
In most cases, job candidates will never know the reason why they were turned down or that the employer was looking at their postings in the first place.
Morgan Kinross-Wright, director of the undergraduate career center at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, said there is so much buzz about recruiters reading postings on Facebook that she is considering a meeting with students to drive home the point that what they post online could affect their future.
“Recruiters are using what is on their personal space to make professional decisions,” she said.
To Ryan Schunk, what he does in his personal life is not an employer’s business. The University of Minnesota Duluth junior says he isn’t about to change what is posted on his Facebook page.
“You get to the point where … you have to start watching what you are doing in your private life,” Schunk said. “It just seems ridiculous.”
