Could MySpace Hurt Your Chances of Getting a Job?

You've just started the stressful task of searching for a new job. You've spent hours online researching companies, writing (and re-writing your resume), developing the perfect cover letter, and practicing your interviewing skills. All of your heard work pays off. You begin interviewing with companies for positions that will pay better than your current job and will be a step up in your career food chain. Things are really going well.

Weeks pass and you don't receive a single call back. Where did you go wrong? You run through the list of typical interview blunders and still come up short. Discouraged you log onto your computer and head to Myspace to post a blog about your failing job search and while your there you add some hilarious pictures of last weekend's drunken debauchery. You don't consider, not even for a second, that there is a chance your perspective employers could plug your name into the Myspace search engine and pull up things that you wouldn't want your mother to see, much less your boss.

What many people don't realize is that more and more employers are creating accounts on social networking websites, such as Myspace, as a way of checking up on their employees and perspective employees. Is this ethical? Probably not, but it's a fact that more and more employers are doing this to check on the integrity of their applicants.

They can make a decision regarding who you are based on what you post on your page. My advice to those people who engage in social networking websites, "keep it clean, or keep it private." Many people are posting more personal information about themselves than they realize. There is a false sense on anonymity associated with these websites.

I know that it's more fun to post a blog where you're ripping apart your company's new memo about paper towel use in the women's restroom, but keep in mind that your boss could somehow come across it. Either avoid posting drunken pictures of you and your friends, or make your profile private and add only those people that you know and trust to your friends list.

Take the advice of your mother and mind your p's and q's. Be mindful of what you're posting on other people's pages. It may seem like common sense, but keep in mind that you are not the only person who sees those comments.