Can FaceBook Keep You From Getting That New Job?

Well, I must admit, the social networking “thing” has become part of my family’s life. My wife and I joined FaceBook about three months ago after three requests for a FaceBook account by our teenage children. Since then, I have been in contact with people from high school and college, people I have not talked to in years.

It is an excellent website. My experiences with MySpace were so negative, I stopped using it. If you are not familiar with FaceBook, the website allows people or “friends”  to connect, write messages on a wall, share photos, read statuses, etc. It is actually a great way to stay in touch.

A report published by CareerBuilder recently had some interesting statistics about how employers use social networking when interviewing candidates. Dan Schawbel, over at Personal Branding, just posted about it. Check it out:  http://personalbrandingblog.wordpress.com/2008/09/22/corporate-recruiters-use-social-networks-to-conduct-background-checks/

I think he makes some excellent points as usual. He reviewed the article “One-in-Five Employers Use Social Networking Sites to Research Job Candidates.

It should be no shock that employers “google” you when they are considering you as an employee. I have written about managing your internet presence. I manage mine carefully - you should too!

Here are the stats that Dan collected from the article

• 22% of hiring managers use social networks to research profiles (+11% from 2006)
• 34% of hiring managers dismissed a candidate based on what they found (out of the 22%)
• 24% of hiring managers found information that was used to hire a candidate

Top 3 things that turned hiring managers away

• 41% of candidates posted information about them drinking or using drugs
• 40% of candidates posted provocative or inappropriate photographs or information
• 29% of candidates had poor communication skills

Top 3 things that help candidates out

• 48% of candidates background supported their qualifications for the job
• 43% of candidates had great communication skills
• 40% of candidates was a good fit for the company’s culture

If you have never “googled” your name, now is the time to start - not when you find yourself looking for a job. There may be things about you in the virtual world that may surprise you. I remember finding an obscure PDF file that contained a legal document that included my name, among other managers that I worked with for Company X. The legal complaint was a serious allegation, but not one that was even remotely true. The case was dismissed faster than it was considered. I was working for this company at the time, totally unaware that a case had been filed, and learned about it 2 years later on the internet.

If you consider the statistics that Dan summarized and add a little common sense, you should consider the following:

1. If you do not appear on the first 100 entries of Google, you have no internet presence. Depending on your profession, I would challenge that this could hurt you. The analogy being that if you have too much credit, your credit score goes down, but if you do not have any, you do not have a score.

2. If you are the first entry in Google, or you can be found within the first 100 entries, start to research where the links are coming from. If there are any that you feel might be compromising, work to get rid of them. It is not always possible, though. You cannot always delete a blog post immediately. Google caches pages and they disappear on Google’s schedule.

3.  You don’t want employers to get the impression that you are a party animal. This has more impact on candidates that are exiting college and entering the workforce - but not always. If you have pictures that make employees question your character, you become a liability.

3.  Watch what you say and how you say it. A potential employer may read your wall on FaceBook and instantly form an incorrect perception. Perception is never wrong.

Finally, check your web presence often. I am often amazed at how viral the internet is. Along with an author, college professor and a guy who appears in “smack-down” videos, I managed to appear in 25 of the first 100 links. On the first page of search results, 5 of the 10 were mine. It may take more time and energy to work on your internet resume than the one on paper; however, it is worth the effort.