Part of your daily routine might include checking your e-mail, searching on Google or going to your Facebook or MySpace homepage. Your page may be filled with palm trees and photo galleries that seem harmless. But once you go inside and look at the pictures, there’s one picture that may have slipped your mind: the one where you are half-naked and drunk in Las Vegas.
Searching for a job can be trickier than most might suspect. Aside from the need for a strong reference list, cover letter, examples of work and a flawless résumé, applicants still have to worry about the possibility of employers looking at online profiles and using them as part of their analysis when choosing candidates.
Mo Khan, interim dean of the College of Business Administration, discussed how the future of job searching will drastically change due to the Internet.
“It’s a little bit unusual at this time,” Khan said of the new method employers are using to learn about possible new-hires. “More and more things are going online. Employers are trying to get as much information as possible before talking to people. The face-to-face interview is an important component, but if they can go online to learn about a person, it definitely helps.”
Not just anyone can view a person’s page on MySpace or Facebook due to options that allow users to block people from viewing their pages. However, most of the time, if the employer has a résumé, which usually contains a full name and e-mail address, this is all it takes to gain access.
Georgette Yaipen, a freshman film major, thinks it’s wrong to invade a person’s page.
“Anybody can have that one crazy night out, take a picture and put it on MySpace,” Yaipen said. “It’s not really fair for an employer to look at that. But I’m not really worried about it because I have separate e-mail accounts.”
Sophomore communications major Jonathan Loh, had a similar view, stating that having a MySpace page could be risky.
“I would say it’s safer not to even put up a MySpace if it’s going to jeopardize your future,” Loh said. “But just to be safe, I would change my page to make it look more professional.”
