Your MySpace Profile Could Affect Your Professional Life or Job Hunt
MySpace is a very active social networking site that allows member over the age of 14 to write a profile about themselves and to connect with other people for both friendship as well as romantic purposes. Many young people see it as a fun and creative way to share their thoughts, feelings, hopes and dreams for the future as well as their photos and videos. But can the profile you create on MySpace affect your job prospects or professional life in the future? Let us take a closer look.
More and more it is becoming commonplace for potential employers across the country to do a search over the Internet and in particular to take a look at online communities that are there for the purposes of social networking to see if they can find out as much as possible about individuals who come to them looking for employment. While this may seem deceptive and underhanded, the Internet is there for the use of anyone who wishes to use it and therefore it is well within an employer’s rights to do some checking on any given person. It is quite possible that one of these sites could yield information that turns the employer against a given candidate and makes a job offer extremely unlikely. Canada and the UK are quickly catching onto this concept and are following in the footsteps of the United States in doing searches for prospective employees.
According to article that recently was published in Business Week, “Googling” people is fast becoming a way for bosses and headhunters to do continuous and stealthy background checks on employees, no disclosure required. There are becoming more and more real life examples of talented job hunters that were passed over for jobs because they chose to reveal too much about their lives over the Internet.
It is important to consider how you wish to be viewed by a potential employer down the line. This means that even if you are presently in middle school or high school you want to be careful that nothing you do now via the Internet will come back to haunt you later on. Finding a good job is difficult enough without having damaging pieces of information about yourself spread across the Internet for anyone to read. Be aware too that deleting information at some sites is not as easy as you might think it would be.
Look critically at your online profile and if there are things there that you are embarrassed or ashamed of then remove them immediately! Whether it is swear words, raunchy information or photos that you do not wish those seeking you out in a professional manner to become aware of, remove them or better yet do not include such things in your profile. Make sure that your friends at MySpace do not have anything offensive or embarrassing at their profiles about you or you just might be kissing an excellent job offer goodbye in the near or distant future!
Many people believe that employers who troll the Internet for personal information about potential employees or personal employees are discriminating against them but be aware that even the things you do in your personal life and spare time provide clues to your personality and your character. It probably is not fair but remember that nobody forced you to post certain personal things about your life at MySpace. You chose to do that by yourself.
It is important to use your discretion when you build your online profile and being aware that there is life beyond high school or college is vital to keep in mind. Your future matters as much as the next person’s and finding a job is an essential part of becoming an adult. You wouldn’t want to hire a person who posts intimate information about their sexual escapades or who posts photos of themselves drunk at parties every weekend on MySpace, now would you?
