Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

More Warnings Against Oversharing on MySpace

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the internet-never-forgets dept.

Skapare writes "Your next prospective employer might be watching your MySpace page, according to a story at the New York Times. And if you think Facebook is more private, maybe not if that prospective employer has an intern from the same school checking up on you." From the article: "Students may not know when they have been passed up for an interview or a job offer because of something a recruiter saw on the Internet. But more than a dozen college career counselors said recruiters had been telling them since last fall about incidents in which students' online writing or photographs had raised serious questions about their judgment, eliminating them as job candidates."

2 of 383 comments (clear)

  1. Not just MySpace... by Mendy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Last year we were interviewing for a helpdesk position and one of the candidates mentioned that he'd written tools to aid posting to LiveJournal. This meant that there was a good chance he had an LJ himself so, out of interest we did some googling and found it.

    In it he had written...

    -That he was currently suspended from work for misuse of IT equipment.
    -That his current duties were less technical than the impression he'd given in the interview.
    -That he wasn't really interested in the position we were offering and would be hoping to leave within a few months.

    Needless to say he didn't get the position.

    His blog also went into some detail about his sexual fetishes. This wouldn't have been a reason not to employ him, but it might have made things a bit awkward in the office especially with him not knowing we knew and such.

  2. First Hand Experience by imstanny · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I can agree with that 100%. I interned at a corporate office of a Coal Mining company this year, and HR department told me to help them recruit new interns. In essense, all of the resumes filtered through me first. I facebooked all of the candidates... and it just so happened that the number one candidate for the position (with a 3.91 GPA) was part of a malicious environmentalist group on campus at my school. I can give you 2 guesses to whether or not she even got the interview, but you'll only need one.