How your online profile could leave you broke
Making cents (0 Comments)
By Terreece Clarke
Got a great shot of you and your homemade bong on Facebook? No one knows but you and a couple hundred of your closest friends from the university, right? Maybe not. More and more students are finding that their profiles on Facebook and other sites like it may come back and haunt them when they are looking for a job.
It has been widely reported by both national and college media that employers are using Facebook to check up on potential employees.
The Oracle from the University of South Florida and Marquette University’s Career Services Center both repeated warnings that what happens online doesn’t stay online. Other critics say that unless the recruiter has a university email address, they cannot gain access to the pics you posted online of your blow-up doll collection.
Both are true, according to our research.
Potential employers are gaining access to your information online. Think about it – how often are you looking for an alma mater job hook-up? Or what about the alumni job boards? Most universities are giving their alumni lifetime access to their university e-mail address. That means while Mr. Bossman is darn near 33-years-old, he still has access to Facebook.
Also, if you are interested in working for your school in any capacity, your current profile can be read by anyone at the university.
Say you either don’t have a Facebook profile or you keep it pretty tame, what about your blog?
The likelihood that thousands read your blog everyday waiting for genius rants about your job, a class you hate or how you got out of a midterm is pretty far fetched, but a recruiter or your suspicious professor might just Google you.
In 2005, ExecuNet—a job search organization—conducted a survey of 102 executive recruiters. The majority of recruiters, 75 percent, use search engines to uncover information about candidates and over a quarter of recruiters have used information found online to eliminate candidates.
Your Internet information can have another unwelcomed effect: jail time or the possibility of being a violation of your school’s code of conduct.
A February 24 Associated Press story told how members of Penn State University’s “I Rushed the Field After the OSU Game (And Lived!)” profile helped police and university officials file criminal and code of conduct violations against those students.
Also in February, four Syracuse University students were given probation for blasting a teaching assistant.
Okay, so you take down your photos of your homegrown marijuana plants “Mary” and “Jane” and everything’s cool, right? Not really. Students should know more than anyone else that in the cyberworld material is always being hijacked. Your photos, name and even untrue information about you could still be lurking out there waiting for your dream employer to come by. The only way to protect yourself is to check out the information about you.
Google yourself, beyond being narcissistic, it is a good measure on what shows up. Another way is to create positive buzz to outweigh the bad. Create a blog or other profiles displaying you as an upstanding or at least non-criminal citizen.
ComputerWorld.Com suggests students join Pubsub.com, a site that will send you an e-mail each time something appears about you on the Internet.
Releasing information carelessly can land you on the financially strapped side of the fence. Whether you lose out on that juicy job or you end up failing a class and having to repeat it – cha ching – too much information is never a good thing.
Got a comment about Facebook and employers? Have a story of how online info was used against you or someone you know? Write us! Your comments or story may appear in the paper. How’s that for exposure?
http://www.uweekly.com/story.php?iidart=2095
.
