I was able to find a story in the New York Times about major companies that turn down interns because of the information they find on them on the internet. The companies look at your resumes and grades but then they search the internet on Facebook and MySpace to do more of a background check and see what type of person they think you really are. There are a lot of major companies that do this such type of check and they don’t tell you that they check the internet to find some more information about you. You may end up not getting the job and you don’t know why and this might end up being the reason because of your history on MySpace and Facebook.
I disagree with the story because I feel like it is wrong to go snoop on your interns in that way. I feel like you should just judge them based on their credentials and if their resume looks good and they had great grades coming out of college. What they do outside of their job I feel like is none of your business and they could be totally different from what they may show you but if they get the job done then it shouldn’t be a problem. I understand that jobs should do a background check but I don’t feel like checking Facebook and MySpace is the right way to do it because I think that’s more like being sneaky then just checking. I don’t understand what would make companies check Facebook or MySpace anyway? That seems very random to me.
How we may be able to prevent this from happening is that when companies do check for more information on you then what you give them, set your profiles to private and if they ask to be your friend just deny them because you don’t really know them and that’s the best way to go about protecting yourself. I don’t feel like you can totally prevent these companies from checking you and trying to find information but I think that by limiting your profile it will help a ton because they will just have to go on your resume and grades more then the information that they could not find fully. I think another way of prevention is by asking the company when you go for the interview if they do more specific checks then just your resume and grades. Then you can tell them information that they should know or you can ask why is the information relevant to this job so that you can get some answers from them.
Also should their be some type of law that should prevent employers from getting on Facebook or MySpace to get some more information on the applicant that they are trying to hire? On the other side of that should applicants really be showing their profiles publicly when they have these types of pictures or background information on their pages?
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That is an interesting issue that your article brings up. I am hoping to get picked up by an NFL team right now and one of the first things that my agent told me to do was clean up my myspace page and to make sure that none of my friends have any pictures of me on their pages that would give me a negative image. I must say that I disagree with you about the fact that it is not right for a company to look in these places for information. I think that it is perfectly fair and that it is a good tool for companies to use when researching to backgrounds of potential employees.
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