You are what you post! Be careful!
 

We all know, you are what you post but according to the following article, it is more than myspace and blogs which can potentially hurt you. We all think in terms of short term "harm" like your chances at greek life (if you are going through recruitment) or hurt your chances at a job, so everyone should take note! Your life after college might need some editing before you start sending out resumes!

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...3/b3977071.htm

Denise

And that is why I'm not on Facebook or MySpace. The last thing I need is for my employer to find something they don't like in my online profile and use it against me.

I've viewed MySpace profiles for friends and sorority sisters and I just have to shake my head sometimes. There's pictures of them throwing up over a toilet after a long night of partying, pictures of them passed out on a bar, pictures of them with a joint in their hand, blog entries about them getting completely wasted the night before and "getting wasted" being listed as one of their interests.

Now, those who know me know I certainly like to go out and have my fair share of drinks but I try to keep the incriminating evidence to a bare minimum. It's so easy to look up someone's MySpace profile. Type their name into the search function and their profile comes up. I dunno...I just wouldn't want my boss to see a picture of me drunk and dancing on top of a bar. Yet, so many of my friends have pictures of themselves like that on MySpace. These are friends that have full-time jobs or are currently looking for one.

I just wouldn't want what I have on my MySpace profile to keep me from getting a job or get me fired.

Re: You are what you post! Be careful!
 

This subject really really pisses me off. Why should an employer give a damn about what an employee does outside of work? It's really none of their business, unless what they're doing is effecting their work performance. People with full-time jobs have been getting wasted and dancing on top of bars for many many years. So why should this stuff be held against us today?

Re: Re: You are what you post! Be careful!
 

Does it piss you off that employers do background checks?? What's the difference?? They're looking for the BEST candidate for the job, and if it comes down to two equal people, but one of the two is indiscreet enough to have rauchy/inappropriate pics on the Web, which do you think is going to get hired? Plus, if they are that indiscreet about what they post about THEMSELVES on the Web, how are they going to represent your comapany?? Are you going to go onto the Web later and serach for your company name (trust me, employers do it) and be happy when the employee you hired that had pics all over MySpace now has you listed as their employer and your name comes up listed next to pics of the employee pole dancing or pukeing....

Re: Re: Re: You are what you post! Be careful!
 

That really wouldn't bother me....which is one of the reasons why I'm not corporate material. I would not want my employees to be criminals and I'm glad there are ways that I can find that out. I dunno, I just don't see partying as a really bad thing, and I'm not the drink-until-you-puke kind of person at all. It's not a really good thing either, but I think there's bigger fishes to fry.

Re: Re: You are what you post! Be careful!
 

Say you work at a very conservative company with big-named clients. Hypothetically, you're at a bar one night and you get wasted. You tell everyone where you work in between making out with guys. An executive from one of your company's clients just so happens to be at the bar that night. He sees this scene you're making and decides to stop doing business with your company since he feels the employees are completely unprofessional. This was a multi-million dollar client.

Of course, this is a big hypothetical but it's every company's worst nightmare. If a company finds out that you like to get wasted every weekend and make an ass out of yourself, you are a liability to them. I agree that what you do on your own time should have no bearing on your professional life but, unfortunately, it does. You never know who is watching you.

Luckily for me, my profession is full of alcoholics and horndogs. I kid, but not very much.

Here's a stupid question. If you don't use your actual name in your myspace or webshots profile, how can people find you? Wouldn't they have to be trolling the web just looking for stuff like that? (Not that anyone would ever do that unless they were really sick and twisted) One of my coworkers has a webshots w/ tons of pics of us partying, but I don't know how you could find it unless you have her user name. She doesn't have location or anything.

I mean, the only times I've used my full name is on that Greek quotes site that used to be up, and letters to the editor that are in the public domain. Why would you be so stupid as to say "Hi! My name is Dalia Terino. Here is my personal blog full of pics of me having sex!" Yeah, forget hiring a person like that - just because they're stupid. Not because of what they choose to do in their free time.

Edited because I am old and temporarily mixed up MySpace & Webshots - I do know the diffference though. :)

I don't think they can. But, if someone posts enough information about themselves it isn't hard to find out who they are. But, like you said they would have to be fishing around and looking at random profiles to do that. You may or may not find the target person using that strategy.

Ha Ha thats great! In the future Human Resource directors are going to have to troll around myspace and livejournal before doing final interview.

LOL at the thought of our HR person having to troll through things like the Hello Kitty lovers LJ community. She would off herself first.

The only thing I can think of about this is - how easy is it to figure out who a rushee is when they come on here and give us a little info...although that's a unique situation when you have a limited amount of people to choose from.

Unless she's got any info about your company on there, I wouldn't be too worried.

Yeah, I think finding out about a rushee is an entirely different matter because we've got people calling people and such. An HR director isn't going to do that.

I could care less if the whole city sees our pics, quite frankly. There's nothing embarrassing on there.

I think we're all looking at the internet from a negative perspective. Let's just turn this around a bit. Why not use MySpace and other websites as a positive PR tool? What better place to post your accomplishments?

As someone who has had to deal with the myspace/facebook/webshots issue in depth, trust me, it doesn't take rocket scientists to figure out who people are, or find someone who will give your identity up. There was a piece on CNN about this same sort of thing this weekend, and it's true. Don't post on myspace what you wouldn't put on your front door...and I just don't get the whole posting of photos of yourself drunk/naked, etc. I guess I'm just getting old :)

this is exactly why i asked if someone knew about making myspace profiles only visible to friends

myspace is just so much fun, i don't want to get rid of it, besides, i'm sure i don't have anything tooo bad like what is discussed on this thread