Networking Sites Used for Background Checks?

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Rich Tate

Supreme [H]ardness
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Jun 9, 2005
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You might want to consider removing all those pictures of your wild nights from your MySpace or Facebook page as employers are now looking at them as well.

Social networking websites such as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and blogs are emerging as one of the most commonly used tools by recruiters to conduct background checks and gain a sense of a job seeker's character, say recruiters.
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We have hire several people recently and have used these sites. The first thing I do is google the person and see what comes up.
 
Why don't you go ahead and sift through my mail too, or maybe come inspect my apartment? :rolleyes:

What I do on my personal myspace/website/whatever is none of their business. As long as I am professional and do my job, myspace shouldn't matter.
 
I had a friend turned down for a job as a cop because of her myspace page. It had pictures of her from her costume/theater make-up course that showed her as a zombie (she got an A btw). She's a bit of a goth, but that shouldn't have stopped them from hiring her. Welcome to the time where everything you do online comes back to haunt you.
 
This is easily another form of descrimination, right up there with discriminating based on race and gender. You shouldnt hire me based on what my myspace looks like. What I do when I'm not working is none of your damn business.
 
So if you like to have fun and be wild on your free time now.. You're going to be working at McDonalds for the rest of your life.

Or you could just not use the sites. But then that just turns into another form of censorship. That's kinda fucked up. I have been hearing a few stories about people getting fired from jobs they have been working at because an employee Googled their name and found them on a sex offender registry.. How does any of that have anything to do with anything unless you're getting a job with kids.

It all a load of crap. Not to mention that it's so easy to falsify stuff, not to mention not very many names are unique. I looked up my name on Google and there is a drummer, jeweler, solar panel salesman, award(?!) and sex offender in Texas with the same name. I would think an employer would be hard pressed to really try to glean any information accurately about me personally through all of that.
 
I don't know why anyone would consider an internet profile to be an accurate source of information - people purposely mangle those profiles and use them to make jokes and so on. If you don't understand the culture, it's entirely too easy to draw the wrong conclusions from this sort of thing. I put my name on most of my profiles, and don't generally worry about it too much because I own domains and all my information is already hung out for everyone to see. But, curious manager types might just force me to reconsider that. Then again, I don't have a Myspace account - I don't document every moment of my life or pour out my soul to any who will listen. If anyone ever did a search for me all they'd get is a bunch of video game sites, enthusiast sites, and nerd hangouts. That's hardly confidential information.:D

Manager types are probably more prone to mis-reading this sort of thing due to the fact that they seem to have no connection with humanity in the first place. ;)

Sidenote: I've often thought that the concept behind a blog has been somewhat diluted. It's supposed to be so you can document interesting things like what you do in a hobby: building computers or collecting postage stamps or similar. Minutiae or your life hardly counts as something interesting worth documenting.
 
SamuraiInBlack said:
I see no reason why one needs to share their private life online at all.
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Well, its a new part of the social structure now, so I think only more and more people will do it.

In the end, employers will wind up stopping the practice when they find out they can dig up anything on anybody, resulting in no employees left to do any work. :D
 
Um yeah I think a lot of the problem can be solved if you fiddle around with your privacy settings. But then again, the average person doesn't do this
 
Meh, doesn't bother me... it's not like I'm on some social site such as myspace prancing around in my birthday suit.

Look at the bright side, it could be rather a large advantage for me, especially when folks find my numerous tech sites and tech postings :D
 
Furthermore, when did surfing someone's Myspace become a substitute for a background check?!?! You know, that thing you're supposed to do before you employ someone. :rolleyes:
 
Who puts enough identifying info on something online so they can be tracked down by their employer? Lessons learned the hard way, that should be common sense by now.
 
Ockie said:
Meh, doesn't bother me... it's not like I'm on some social site such as myspace prancing around in my birthday suit.

Look at the bright side, it could be rather a large advantage for me, especially when folks find my numerous tech sites and tech postings :D
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Sure, until they *read* them.

Sorry, man, couldn't resist... :D
 
lol, sounds like some people have unwanted material on their gayspace accounts. :p
 
edit ftw... *inappropriate* or *undesirable* might be a better choice of words.
 
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