This article was pulled from The New York Times. It might be a good reminder in
keeping with recent posts about remembering that e-mail really isn't private. THis
might be a reallly good article to share with our high schoolers as well.
Some, Online Persona Undermines a Résumé
E-MailPrint Reprints Save
By ALAN FINDER
Published: June 11, 2006
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.
Skip to next paragraph
Enlarge this Image
Jamie Rector for The New York Times
Tien Nguyen, a college senior, signed up for job interviews but said he was seldom
contacted until he withdrew a satirical online essay.
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.
Concerns have already been raised about these and other Internet sites, including
their potential misuse by stalkers and students exposing their own misbehavior, for
example by posting photographs of hazing by college sports teams. Add to the list
of unintended consequences the new hurdles for the job search.
Ana Homayoun runs Green Ivy Educational Consulting, a small firm that tutors and
teaches organizational skills to high school students in the San Francisco area.
Ms. Homayoun visited Duke University this spring for an alumni weekend and while
there planned to interview a promising job applicant.
Curious about the candidate, Ms. Homayoun went to her page on Facebook. She found
explicit photographs and commentary about the student's sexual escapades, drinking
and pot smoking, including testimonials from friends. Among the pictures were shots
of the young woman passed out after drinking.
"I was just shocked by the amount of stuff that she was willing to publicly
display," Ms. Homayoun said. "When I saw that, I thought, 'O.K., so much for that.'
"
Ms. Rose said a recruiter had told her he rejected an applicant after searching the
name of the student, a chemical engineering major, on Google. Among the things the
recruiter found, she said, was this remark: "I like to blow things up."
Occasionally students find evidence online that may explain why a job search is
foundering. Tien Nguyen, a senior at the University of California, Los Angeles,
signed up for interviews on campus with corporate recruiters, beginning last fall,
but he was seldom invited.
A friend suggested in February that Mr. Nguyen research himself on Google. He found
a link to a satirical essay, titled "Lying Your Way to the Top," that he had
published last summer on a Web site for college students. He asked that the essay
be removed. Soon, he began to be invited to job interviews, and he has now received
several offers.
"I never really considered that employers would do something like that," he said.
"I thought they would just look at your résumé and grades."
Jennifer Floren is chief executive of Experience Inc., which provides online
information about jobs and employers to students at 3,800 universities. "This is
really the first time that we've seen that stage of life captured in a kind of time
capsule and in a public way," Ms. Floren said. "It has its place, but it's moving
from a fraternity or sorority living room. It's now in a public arena."
Some companies, including Enterprise Rent-a-Car, Ernst & Young and Osram Sylvania,
said they did not use the Internet to check on college job applicants.
"I'd rather not see that part of them," said Maureen Crawford Hentz, manager of
talent acquisition at Osram Sylvania. "I don't think it's related to their bona
fide occupational qualifications."
More than a half-dozen major corporations, including Morgan Stanley, Dell, Pfizer,
L'Oréal and Goldman Sachs, turned down or did not respond to requests for
interviews.
But other companies, particularly those involved in the digital world like
Microsoft and Métier, a small software company in Washington, D.C., said
researching students through social networking sites was now fairly typical. "It's
becoming very much a common tool," said Warren Ashton, group marketing manager at
Microsoft. "For the first time ever, you suddenly have very public information
about almost any candidate."
At Microsoft, Mr. Ashton said, recruiters are given broad latitude over how to
work, and there is no formal policy about using the Internet to research
applicants. "There are certain recruiters and certain companies that are probably
more in tune with the new technologies than others are," he said.
Microsoft and Osram Sylvania have also begun to use networking sites in a different
way, participating openly in online communities to get out their company's messages
and to identify talented job candidates.
Students may not know when they have been passed up for an interview or a job offer
because of something a recruiter saw on the Internet. But more than a dozen college
career counselors said recruiters had been telling them since last fall about
incidents in which students' online writing or photographs had raised serious
questions about their judgment, eliminating them as job candidates.
Some college career executives are skeptical that many employers routinely check
applicants online. "My observation is that it's more fiction than fact," said Tom
Devlin, director of the career center at the University of California, Berkeley.
At a conference in late May, Mr. Devlin said, he asked 40 employers if they
researched students online and every one said no.
Many career counselors have been urging students to review their pages on Facebook
and other sites with fresh eyes, removing photographs or text that may be
inappropriate to show to their grandmother or potential employers. Counselors are
also encouraging students to apply settings on Facebook that can significantly
limit access to their pages.
Melanie Deitch, director of marketing at Facebook, said students should take
advantage of the site's privacy settings and be smart about what they post. But
students may not be following the advice.
"I think students have the view that Facebook is their space and that the adult
world doesn't know about it," said Mark W. Smith, assistant vice chancellor and
director of the career center at Washington University in St. Louis. "But the adult
world is starting to come in."
More Articles in National »
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Please note: All LM_NET postings are protected by copyright law.
You can prevent most e-mail filters from deleting LM_NET postings
by adding LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU to your e-mail address book.
To change your LM_NET status, e-mail to: listserv@listserv.syr.edu
In the message write EITHER: 1) SIGNOFF LM_NET 2) SET LM_NET NOMAIL
3) SET LM_NET MAIL 4) SET LM_NET DIGEST * Allow for confirmation.
* LM_NET Help & Information: http://www.eduref.org/lm_net/
* LM_NET Archive: http://www.eduref.org/lm_net/archive/
* EL-Announce with LM_NET Select: http://elann.biglist.com/sub/
* LM_NET Supporters: http://www.eduref.org/lm_net/ven.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------
LM_NET
Mailing List Home