Carolinian

Issue date: 11/7/06 Section: Life

Media Credit: Ashley Vonclausburg Pictures of nights spent chugging Jack right from the bottle, while entertaining for your friends, are not as endearing to future employers.

You sign into your e-mail account and have a message notifying you that someone has posted pictures of you on Facebook. Immediately, you click the link and find five or six pictures of yourself with an empty half-gallon of Captain Morgan's, sprawled in the middle of someone's lawn, dressed in clothes that you are positive do not belong to you. It's embarrassing, but hysterical, right? You know it was just one out of control weekend, and that's not at all how you act on a regular basis. But what sort of image are you portraying to the other people who look at your profile? You might be surprised to know that it's not just other college students browsing through pictures, but potential employers and university officials.

Last year, at the University of Oklahoma, a student was placed under investigation by the Secret Service after making threats about President Bush on Facebook. At Louisiana State, two swimmers lost their scholarships after lewd comments about their coach were found on the same site. In a recent poll conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, more than one quarter of employers say that they have searched for applicants or reviewed their profiles on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. Recruiters at New York University from over 30 companies said they also used online profiles to assess a candidate's character and qualification for a job. It is becoming more and more common for people in authority to use social networking sites to verify a candidate's or student's moral character.

Laura Jo Peterson, a junior at UNCG, worked for Corry Publishing in Pennsylvania as a Human Resources Intern. She reviewed over 50 applications a day for potential employees. "Candidates, for positions like web editor, would often put sample pages they had created for us to get an idea of their work," said Peterson. "However, they would unknowingly send us directly to pages that contained links to their online profiles like MySpace. These sites would contain pictures of anything from their numerous tattoos to them engaging in sex!" Peterson said that without doubt these candidates were immediately removed from consideration. In one incident, a girl who was a "paper champion" (her resume looked impeccable) turned out to be an actress in porn films, after an online search was conducted on her. The online escapades of innumerable candidates cost them jobs at Corry Publishing.

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