Sarah Reinhart-Friendship Based Real Estate®

What horror stories have you heard about or perhaps even happened to you as a result of information that was posted to blogs or social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook?

One of the worst that I've heard was from a friend,of a friend of mine, who was hiring a pharmaceutical representative. She ran a Google search on her name after he and everyone else at his firm had decided they wanted to hire him. Although he had been careful not to include his name on his page, his friends weren't so smart and created a link from his name on their pages to the candidate's MySpace profile page. Google is smart enough to have understood that although the candidate's MySpace page didn't have her name on it, because her friends linked using her name that people searching for the candidate by name will want to go to the candidate's MySpace page.

The problem wasn't that he had a MySpace page. The problem was that the content indicated that he liked to get drunk and have sex with strangers. My friend declined to extend the job offer to her not because of that (he doubted she'd get drunk and have sex while on the job) but because her posting of that information on-line indicated a lack of good judgment.

Any stories that you can share about candidates not being hired or not being admitted to schools or employees

So you have a Facebook profile and you enjoy reading daily updates from your friends and browsing their photo albums. You also enjoy posting your own photos and updating your status. It's rewarding and safe, you think, because after all, you use the privacy settings to not show your profile in search results and all your photos are accessible to your friends only. You feel in complete control of everything that you've added to Facebook so far.

NOT TRUE!!!!

By posting your photo on Facebook you grant the site the right to reuse that Photo for any purpose they please. Yes, they can use your private photos anytime anywhere because you grant them that right. You don't believe me? Read this directly from their Terms of Use:

By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

Scary, very scary. I am not quite sure how this new info is going to effect my online marketing...But, i am definatly taking photos of my kiddos off my facebook page.

Any thoughts?

With digital screenings becoming as popular as drug testing and reference checks it is more important than ever that you watch what you say online. It may seem harmless now, but it could be the thing that keeps you from getting a job in the future.

I searched the comments made in the last few days on Twitter and easily found over 1000 comments that could get someone fired from their current position or possibly hurt them during a future job search. Listed below are 20 examples of things job seekers should not say on twitter:

1. Never talk about how you get drunk at work !

2. Never talk about about how you just failed a drug test!

3. Never talk about your mental health issues!

4. Never explain exactly how much you hate your boss!

5. Never talk about taking naps and playing on the internet while working!

The list goes on and on. Now you should be doing any of these things anyway, but definatly....don't make the information public property!

People seem to think information they put on the internet is transient - here today, gone tomorrow. Increasingly, we are finding data doesn't disappear when you delete it. It may be automatically saved by Facebook or Google.

You may think you got rid of something but it can come back to bite you.

If you are 18, you don't think about your 42-year-old self looking for a job or promotion. People don't consider that long-term risk. I think this could become a serious problem in future.

Young people seem very blasé about their privacy, but their opinions may change in years to come.

People should consider what information they are letting out about themselves and to whom. Even if you think you have secured your pages through Facebook, the data may be accessible through other routes like Google.

People don't think about employers reading their Facebook pages and kids don't think about their parents going online to check up on them. But an increasing number do.

Employers don't want to take risks with employees. One way they can find out who they're hiring is by checking their Facebook page. Recent research by an American university found 23 per cent of employers reviewed candidates' profiles on social networking sites.

It surprised me how many were using sites like Facebook to screen applicants.

Here, workers can now ask to see traditional job references under the Data Protection Act, so people might be reluctant to write the things they would have done years ago.

So employers go to the next best source - Facebook - to find out more.

There have also been a number of cases of people being fired for criticising their employer on Facebook.