Social networking comes back to haunt you

It was quite amusing to see a gawky picture of Julia Gillard and comments from Alexander Downer’s son about his ‘pompous’ dad appear in the weekend papers – both were retrieved from social networking websites.  This is a reminder to us all that we should be very, very careful what images we upload to websites (not just social networking sites) and what comments we post in open forums on the internet.

Have you ever ‘googled’ yourself?   It’s worth doing, because the search results that are returned by searching on your name are not only available to you, but they’re also available to ANY person that chooses to search for information about you.  And that includes prospective employers, who will be most interested to see if they can dig up some dirt on you and and will be keen to corroborate everything that you said in your job interview.  In fact, US research says that 44 per cent of employers are now using sites like MySpace and Facebook to research job candidates.

When I ‘google’ my name (don’t you love brands that become verbs – think hoover, xerox..), it reveals my LinkedIn profile, Facebook profile, the fact that I used to run an Indonesian language website, and that I won the high jump at the 1998 Australian Defence Force athletics championships.  Nothing too bad there…thankfully.  But delving a bit deeper, it is not that hard to find a photo of me in the Birdwood High School football team back in 1990, skinny as a rake with massive ears sticking out…

If I were to upload photos of a drunken escapade to Facebook (or if a mate/enemy does same), then it is quite likely that these will be available to internet surfers too.  It’s important that you are aware of what content is available to others via these sites and to protect personal information, where possible (for example, Facebook allows you to keep elements of your profile private).  If you don’t want the world to know, then just don’t publish the information on the web.  Simple as that.

Unfortunately, once published, the content is like a ‘tattoo’ – very difficult to erase, so it’s best to exercise discretion.  Prevention is better than the cure.

As an employer, the first place I am looking once the candidate walks out the door after an interview is the web.   You should expect that others are doing the same.