For Some, Online Persona Undermines a Résumé

By ALAN FINDER

When a small consulting company in Chicago was looking to hire a summer intern this month, the company's president went online to check on a promising candidate who had just graduated from the University of Illinois.

At Facebook, a popular social networking site, the executive found the candidate's Web page with this description of his interests: "smokin' blunts" (cigars hollowed out and stuffed with marijuana), shooting people and obsessive sex, all described in vivid slang.

It did not matter that the student was clearly posturing. He was done.

"A lot of it makes me think, what kind of judgment does this person have?" said the company's president, Brad Karsh. "Why are you allowing this to be viewed publicly, effectively, or semipublicly?"

Many companies that recruit on college campuses have been using search engines like Google and Yahoo to conduct background checks on seniors looking for their first job. But now, college career counselors and other experts say, some recruiters are looking up applicants on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Xanga and Friendster, where college students often post risqué or teasing photographs and provocative comments about drinking, recreational drug use and sexual exploits in what some mistakenly believe is relative privacy.

When viewed by corporate recruiters or admissions officials at graduate and professional schools, such pages can make students look immature and unprofessional, at best.

"It's a growing phenomenon," said Michael Sciola, director of the career resource center at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. "There are lots of employers that Google. Now they've taken the next step."

At New York University, recruiters from about 30 companies told career counselors that they were looking at the sites, said Trudy G. Steinfeld, executive director of the center for career development.

"The term they've used over and over is red flags," Ms. Steinfeld said. "Is there something about their lifestyle that we might find questionable or that we might find goes against the core values of our corporation?"

Facebook and MySpace are only two years old but have attracted millions of avid young participants, who mingle online by sharing biographical and other information, often intended to show how funny, cool or outrageous they are.

On MySpace and similar sites, personal pages are generally available to anyone who registers, with few restrictions on who can register. Facebook, though, has separate requirements for different categories of users; college students must have a college e-mail address to register. Personal pages on Facebook are restricted to friends and others on the user's campus, leading many students to assume that they are relatively private.

But companies can gain access to the information in several ways. Employees who are recent graduates often retain their college e-mail addresses, which enables them to see pages. Sometimes, too, companies ask college students working as interns to perform online background checks, said Patricia Rose, the director of career services at the University of Pennsylvania.

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/us/11recruit.html?ei=5094&en=781ea88cb29e91cb&hp=&ex=1149998400&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print

I say kudos to employers on this one--if you want an adult job, act like an adult, especially in the public sphere, which includes the internet.

and some degree of maturity.

(as mine and many others do), and that information is used to exclude you from a job? You can't prove that you were denied employment because you admitted on the internet, that you were gay or an atheist, but that's what happened.

I have two online accounts, on Myspace and Facebook. With Myspace it's fairly easy to cover my tracks, since my profile isn't in my name...I just have to give a different e-mail account from the one listed. But facebook users all go by their names. What if some employer looks up my account and decides he doesn't want me working for him because I've listed my political views as "very liberal"?

Now, you might say that if I have concerns about the information I put out there being used against me, I shouldn't have profiles that can be publically viewed. But there are benefits to having these accounts, and not just to my social life. Facebook is used to organize study groups, political activities, and even student elections; and Myspace has become an excellent tool for honing my writing skills and getting feedback from muy peers.

I'd like it very much if these sites gave people the option of having their profile viewable only by friends (although facebook is already like that ). But until then, I think it's only fair and decent (though unfortunately, not likely) for employers to have a certain amount of respect for peoples' privacy.

I have no desire to work for any of these capitalist pigs. Get an imagination, people.

My private life is just that. My personal opinions are just that. Drug tests? I'm walking out.

If you don't want me, even though I would be the best for the job - fuck you!

I am prepared to be a waitress, yes (I have a masters degree).

FUCK THEM ALL. You only live once.

The prospective employers in this article are questioning judgement, not behavior. They're not giving drug tests. They're asking you to keep your private life just that: private.

It's one thing to drink to excess, take drugs and engage in other risky/illegal behavior. It's another to brag about it in a way that identifies you. Every company I've worked for in a professional capacity (as opposed to the factories I worked in prior to my career) didn't give a rat's ass that most of their employees took various drugs, drank to excess, engaged in all manner of unconventional sexual behavior, or even did any or all of that on the premises so long as they were discreet and their behavior didn't impact their work. Knowing that the general manager of a major branch office heads up a swinger's club in his home (Hi, Ian) is different than seeing the photos on his swinger's website.

It's the judgement. Good judgement means knowing that your private life is exactly that: private. So, keep it that way.

Where does judgement become prejudicial? If the company doesn't want to hire gays or lesbians, all they need to do is focus on the discussion of sexual talk on the Myspace page as 'poor judgement.'

What if the page is performance art? Would they know? Would they even have the decency to ask? I doubt it.

It's more evidence that we need information age updates on labor laws and privacy.

How very judgmental. Those things are forever on the internet too. I suppose it is fine with you that some kid's professional life is over before it starts, simply because he or she posted some bs when they were playing around on the internet.

You folks are amazing! I guess I am just simple, but I think that is ridiculous! Guess that is why the corporate world and I have went our separate ways. Work to live, not vice versa.

It's a means to an end. After 5 pm they don't have shit to do with you. I notice they didn't mention leaked test answers, or term papers for sale. - No. It's all about their private time. If they can manage that AND get good grades AND end up in a position to be interviewed, good for them.

YOUR JOB DOES NOT DICTATE YOUR LIFE, NOR SHOULD ANY JOB -- DONT GIVE A RATS ASS IF ITS YOUR CHOICE -- NO JOB HAS THE RIGHT TO TELL YOU HOW TO LIVE IN YOUR OFF HOURS.

Sure would like some hung-over bleary-eyed alcoholic at the stick of my flight at 0600 after he closed the bar at 0230. Or better yet, a doctor poking around in my brain that does coke at home?

Yes, sometimes employers not only have the RIGHT but the DUTY to make sure what their employees do on their own time doesn't affect job performance. Your "private time" doesn't mean jack to me when you fuck up and crash the airplane I happen to be on because your judgement was shot from all the Scotch you drank last night.

My job interferes with my "private time". I am subject to random drug and alcohol tests whenever on-duty as a condition of employment, and I accepted those terms when hired. It was a matter of public safety. No drug test, no job, no question. Immediate dismissal.

If a person is stupid enough to post on a public forum that they routinely smoke pot and drink themselves stupid every night, I would question their ability to keep their "private" life private. Seems that they want the world to know.

"Oh, those field slaves are so crude. They don't deserve to be in the house, look
how they talk funny...."

The corporate world is looking for good clones and the internet has provided them with
a new total information environment to deny people the right to the presumption of
innocence or due process of law to determine substantive matters. (the internet is heresay).


Article 12.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.


http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html

The house slaves are for attacks on human rights because they are afraid of losing
their position in the pecking order next to the master... how embarassing.

private, after you put it on the internet for everyone to see?

I get hits mostly from my profession and professional and academic publications,
, a couple from my religion, and some for political petitions. I did not publish
ANY of those things on the web myself. Then the employer will be using religious
and political information to make a job decision, and this is increasingly what
its about, using the internet to blacklist.

I've been the victem of blacklisting before by a concerted campaign against my
religious group in the mid 90's and why i left the US to work. I know damny well
how this kind of stuff is abused, and it is wrong. It is not about what people
write on myspace, but the lifetime footprint of the intnernet, and its
exposure of personal matters that simply have no place in a hiring decision.

If you are a GBLT activist and have fought for these issues, likely you'll be
online on a petition somewhere. Then the employer will know you're gay, and
can make or not make a decision based on that, whether or not the name really
is *YOU*, and you'll never ever be able to prove descrimination. Ain't that
just grande.

You can not prohibit an employee from searching on-line.

searches used by employers. Then the record will
exist from the corporate person to show that it descriminated
against a real person using heresay. I would say, any
information search on a person's name after the submission
of a CV/Resume, be a matter of public record, that if a real
person chose to question the criteria of hiring they would have
a fair chance against the new discrimination of being any religion
that is unliked, or being any race, or sexual orientation, or sex,
or weight, or previous weight, or 20 years ago a foolish college
student, basically using the internet to persecute a new sick war
against the very fringe that speaks on DU, progressives, people
who stand for privacy and equality of opportunity even for weird
people, even for potsmokers or gay people even, even!

The internet is become a dangerous weapon in the hands of persons
who abuse a record. I bet that sophistocated countries eventually
devleop a body of law that forces all on line information on an idivdiual
person to be taken off line within 7 years. The medium will ossify and
kill the ability of people to change and evolve over a long lifetime.

LOL

I think it's bullshit that employers stalk people online...prospective or current employees. It's all about privacy and I don't think corporation's profits are an excuse to invade anyone's.

It used to be you only had to worry about such scrutiny if your job involved public safety or national security...which is understandable. But for a corporate business job? That's over the line IMHO.

I know it doesn't seem like it, but can't this work in favor of people sometimes if the person hiring is liberal or at least has a sense of humor?

You will have to recognize that hiring someone who exhibits this type of behavior is going to put you at risk. It's pretty obvious that these sites are publicly accessible, so where is the surprise in all of this?

Not all sustainable businesses would be hurt by things like this. What I don't understand is the apparent disconnect between the conservative decorum we've been convinced is necessary in business and the fact that at least half of the consumers aren't conservative and wouldn't give a shit if a business employed someone whose college website said something about smoking blunts. Isn't there actually a market where this would appeal to consumers? Why are we accepting fascist corporate programming as fact when reality dictates otherwise?

generally speaking the answer to your question is no, there isn't room for such an appeal to consumers. Would you be in favor of, or at least indifferent to, dealing with the following:

* A dentist who publicly boasts of his usage of illicit drugs?

* A financial advisor who publicly claims to "black out 2+ times a week"?

* A lawyer who makes it known that he has a well, let's say "less than respectful" attitude towards women?

At the low end of the market, a consumer or employer might not care about these sorts of things. You probably wouldn't care if the guy delivering your pizza had any of the above characteristics, because it is unlikely to make that much of a difference in their performance. When you are talking about being a PROFESSIONAL, then yes, it does matter, and it's not really "fascist corporate programming", it's being an adult.

I'm not naive enough to believe everything someone posts on the internet. I guess that's a sign of immaturity.

then I guess it's settled.

An employer is not looking for some cool party dude to get wasted with after work. An employer is looking for a good worker with required job skills, with an acceptably professional persona. The employer is hiring someone who will be an asset to the company.

If I saw that a co-worker had really trashy, embarrassing myspace, and if that person was at all flaky on the job, their myspace page would lower my opinion of that person. It would only increase my hunch that they were hungover every day, and irresponsible.

Can't let the cat out of the bag that WASPs aren't any more "moral" than those people across the tracks. Buncha hypocrites.

is the discussion of the "core values of corporations." Smoking a blunt is way worse than underfunding pensions and outsourcing jobs. The moral of this story kiddies, keep your private life private.

that they would not mind seeing as a headline in the paper.. Stuff you write has a way of finding its way into public..

I think there are a lot of kids online who are "acting bad' to get attention............... they will not always be a teenager, but what they wrote online might "always" be there for the googling.. :scared:

I wish I had known that stuff that I posted on the net under my real name could follow me through life when I was younger.

1. Never use your real name online in connection with anything remotely "questionable".
2. Never give a prospective or actual employer the same e-mail address as you use for "other" stuff.

out there, including their names, their addresses, their photos, etc. It's not even safe for some young teenager to do that sort of thing, but they seem clueless.

I've never participated in any website like that, and never would.
But young generations are enamoured with mobiles and internet, often
clositered by parents in a false-utopia, like prince Gautama before
he left the garden of the castle. And from the false utopia, there
is a peaceful world of nondangerous people out there.

Methinks we're early on in this information age, and liabel law is gonna
become a new online-field, where entire practices exist to correct the public
record when it is wrong, much as what john kerry is doing, as he realizes the
new stickiness of letting a public record lie about you. Then every employer
and voter out there starts to believe it.

They can be too trusting sometimes and not realize that some people do intend to harm them. That's why it's important for parents and other adults to impress upon them the importance of keeping personal information private.

I want to do a mock-up one for Dubya.

just lost his job this week over stuff he had posted on myspace. > > >

Democratic staffer resigns after Internet posting
Associated Press

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. - An employee of the Missouri Democratic Party has resigned after party officials said he posted inappropriate comments on a personal Internet site.

Travis Levitt, a recent college graduate, had been hired in April and worked out of the party's Kansas City office organizing volunteers for phone banks and canvassing in support of Democratic candidates. He resigned Wednesday, state Democratic executive director Corey Dillon said.

Dillon said Levitt had posted inappropriate language in a personal diary on Myspace.com, a popular social networking Web site.

"In staff training, all of our employees are told not to post personal information on Web sites," Dillon said. "He did, he made a mistake, he acknowledged it and resigned."

<skip>

The existence of Levitt's Web site - posted under the name "T-Lovin It" - was first revealed Wednesday morning on The Source, a conservative Web blog run by Jeff Roe, a former chief of staff to Rep. Sam Graves, R-Mo.

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/local/14773245.htm

I'm hosed.

Clark Kent was a raging drug addict, but hides it well. Made me so mad when he beat me out on a job interview and I don't do drugs at all. He also (I hear) has tons of STD's. I also heard he cheated on all his exams.

My name comes up in exactly two matches on google - here, in that giant "my name is..." thread, and in a petition. I could see an employer not hiring me because of my political affiliation.

Luckily, that is all that comes up when you search for my unusual name. What if my name were Joe Smith? I'm sure those 97 million pages are not about one guy. There is an immense yawning chasm of room for error in this practice, and it will certainly affect thousands of people, most negatively. Awesome.

It also brings up a track runner in high school and a doctor. But mainly porn stars and an old eopinion post I made.

Aren't me. If an employer doesn't have sense enough to verify the identity of the person they're looking at online, I don't want to work for him or her.

A search could be very deceptive, bringing up four or five hits on someone, and one more on someone else. There might be a small handful of people and a lot of dirty or irresponsible facts. In most cases, people don't post their whole name along with other identifying information like address, schools attended, age, city... but if you are found in a small handful of search results along with some other people, how might that affect your prospective employer's opinion? To know that you MIGHT be X or do Y.

It's just a bad, ill-conceived, and ill-mannered idea.

... your real life.

Duh.

Sorry - I'm with companies on this. If I can find you doing drugs online, then you're too stupid to work for me.

crocheting. But you are right, I should be fully discriminated against for what my name does in my private time.

There are, of course, a number of other reasons someone might be too stupid to work for me. I didn't mean to suggest that being caught doing drugs online was the ONLY reason...

And it's not MY past. There are two flipping errors that could be made out right. 1. Your name is not unique. 2. Others may talk about you - and as long as they say it's not fact, it's rumor, they are entitled to use your name on the web.

BOTH could screw you.

But you are not willing to take that into consideration, therefore reasons #1 and #2 are probably ample cause for you not to hire me.

... but you're right - I should NOT have assumed that meant you were actually saying anything that was in any way relevant to what I said.

My apologies - won't make that mistake again!

Yet one more reason to have your online life separate from....

... your real life.

Duh.

Sorry - I'm with companies on this. If I can find you doing drugs online, then you're too stupid to work for me.

--------

Sorry, I think you would be too stupid to know the differnce between xxxxx xxxx and xxxxx xxxx and wouldn't hire me because of my nefarious name.

Get it yet?

There wasn't any mention of what you're talking about happening. Companies would be more likely to employ this tactic when they are positive that you are the one depicted.

I fight the drugs laws online, and i'm smart enough to fight for justice no matter
the personal risks. By advocating an end to the drugs war, i am charged immediately with
being a drugs user, junkie and all that, and i indeed have used cannabis occastionally
for decades. It is why i know that it is not the crime they've set up, and i'm wiser
for it. It makes me an advocate for a political war created by republicans to imprison
and destroy the lives of those who are more inclined to take risks and experiment with
life's natural choices. I'm sorry that is stupid in your view. I am a master-software
engineer who's written systems for some of the world's largest companies, and i don't
let my politics or my preferences affect my work.

I hope your views on privacy mature, even for those who are caught out on the butt end of things.

... to here someone else reply (or better "reply") to me under the pretense of disagreeing, but actually failing to even so much as ADDRESS what I was talking about.

The OP discussed someone talking online about doing drugs. I said anyone stupid enough to let me catch them so talking was too stupid to work for me.

You bring up something COMPLETELY irrlelevant - talking about advocacy, not actually doing drugs. And yet you seem to think you're talking about the same thing I am. And that *I'm* immature because you've failed to even be on topic.

Sheesh.

Hope you have better luck de-coupling classes....

That doesn't know how to use spell check or capitalize. Total lack of attention to details. Not too important in software design, I guess.


Must be sampling the advocacy.

Don't get me wrong - I never said there's anything in particular wrong with using drugs.

I only said (something to the effect of) you gotta be dumb as a post to let your (prospective) company KNOW you use drugs. :rofl:

Generally, at least - sure, there could be singular exceptions (if the company is High Times, for example).

You are not honoured, you're being cheekey. :-)

I talk online very much about every aspect of doing drugs, and if you have a look at the
drugs forum, you'll see this. I am spot on accusing you of being immature for supporting
"anyone stupid enough to let me catch them so talking", and you're calling me stupid,
for advocacy that inevitably involves delving in to areas of knowledge and concerns
that only drugs users are aware of.

There is a fine line when you actually get in to advocacy, and your remarks are not well
founded, for all the flaming guff.

Hope you can realize how the classes are actually all connected by friend functions to
the progressive object.

Sheesh.

Grow up and learn something about privacy and human rights law... read my home page and
get real.

from my MySpace page. This is one reason why I don't "blog." Not only do I not want threatening emails from neandrathals who disagree with my ideas, but I don't want people I work for or with to challenge me on it either. I'm a pretty private person anyway, but this type of thing scares the beJesus out of me!

Besides, leave the dark secrets for your close friends! It's more fun that way :)

Start some strategic outing of some high-powered peoples' personal lives until they start begging to let the private be private. Sometimes you gotta start a war if you wanna call a truce!

But I think I'm ok either way. Googled myself and came across pages about some baseball player and a writer.

Guess folks with "wholesome" names have nothing to worry about with this disturbing trend!

:sarcasm:

sites like Facebook, MySpace, Xanga and Friendster, where college students often post risqué or teasing photographs and provocative comments about drinking, recreational drug use and sexual exploits in what some mistakenly believe is relative privacy.

Ahhh, amateurs with cameras. What could be better?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_(website)

Starting with those idiots who didn't hire me...

:evilgrin: