Slashdot Mirror
One In Five Employers Scan Applicants' Web Lives
Ned Nederlander writes "CareerBuilder's new survey finds: 'Of those hiring managers who have screened job candidates via social networking profiles, one-third (34 percent) reported they found content that caused them to dismiss the candidate from consideration.' Some red flags: content about applicant using drugs or drinking, inappropriate photos and bad-mouthing former bosses."
Except when your friends with unlocked profiles post pictures with you tagged in them.
There are privacy settings that allow you to block others from seeing pictures you are tagged in from your profile. You can also block people from seeing your friends list and wall.
Facebook has pretty good privacy settings.
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
That's a pretty narrow view, considering there are other, more time-tested ways to socialize.
I suppose it depends on the position you're hiring for. I usually tend to frown on developers who don't have a web presence in the form of a blog with technical content and what not. Comments on technical forums or even USENET posts are always good. However, the lack of that presence does not necessarily translate into immediate dismissal, there are many other factors, obviously like the ability to ace a technical interview. But being recognized in your field by your peers is always a *huge* plus.
I really could care less (and again, that's just my opinion and the type of people I hire) if you have a facebook page or not.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Usually, the hiring companies pay a third party to do a background check. And they won't know this -- they just collect everything that might be relevant and condense it into a single score.
Great way to spend your time. Fight a battle against twenty stoners who think it's cool to tag pictures with your name.
My friend, I'm not even on facebook and people have still tagged pictures with my name. People who probably thought they were doing me a favour. Being able to untag yourself is an absolutely useless feature. Being able to forbid other people to link to your profile in any way, now that would be a feature.