There has been a lot written lately about people, especially 20-somethings, losing out on job offers based on pictures and stories they posted to the net. MySpace.com appears to be an especially dangerous area for newly minted graduates.So what's the risk?
Here's how an ExecuNet survey of 100 recruiters and 136 executives played out:
35% of executive recruiters who use the Internet to check out prospects say they eliminated candidates based on what they found on the net.
82% of the executives expected recruiters to look them up online.
33% of the executives had never conducted a Web search on themselves. (That's probably the same people who can't type and use a secretary to book everything from their lunch to their next toilet visit.)
16% of the executives fear information online might eliminate them from consideration. (Are these the convicted felons in our executive suites?)
2 comments:
At bit off topic, but...
Patricia Williams has an interesting article on MySpace over at The Nation, entitled "The 600 Faces of Eve" (you must have a sub in order to read it). One aspect of the article in particular caught my attention -
"It doesn't seem unreasonable to question Rupert Murdoch's ownership of MySpace more closely, given its structured invitations for people to sort themselves into cascading ranks of adolescent sexism and sexiness, foul gangsta language and multiple temptations to transgression. If I were a data miner, I'd be in there every day, grazing and hunting and gathering, sorting and profiling and pre-empting for a rainy day."
Signed - Gotta Wear Shades
Well it seems like the only exercise a lot of executives get nowadays is from jumping to conclusions.
The trouble with doing online searches of people is what context the information is in. How does what is on MySpace relate to job performance? Only certain things would apply and there's a lot of interpretation involved in judging it.
The same thing goes for data mining, on web searches of my name, about 90% isn't about me since I have a fairly common name so how do employers know they have the right person when making these decisions?
It's one thing if you find out about convictions online and you can prove it's the same person, but using a MySpace profile to disqualify them about personal habits that you would think might possibly make them undesirable.
An Angel's Destiny
Argon's Awareness
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