Want a job? Clean yourself up online.
Over the past few years, I’ve read through numerous articles on how employers must straighten up and stop internet-profiling their potential employees. Employers should draw solely from the information presented directly to them when determining who to hire. Those seeking jobs have the right to keep their private lives separate from their work lives! Right?
Not necessarily.
The Internet is ubiquitous. It’s much too easy to access, and employers feel that it’s an effective tool for discovering who you “truly” are. This ease of access only feeds the burning temptation employers have to find out more about their prospective employees. So, it’s time for us to face the truth: employers are not going to stop Face-creeping us any time soon, therefore it’s our job to comply with this notion and maintain positive images of ourselves online.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social networking sites present to the world various glimpses of our lives outside of work. Selfies, careless Facebook statuses, accidental party photos, embarrassing videos and the like, are all shamelessly posted online without any regard for the people really viewing this information.
In a sense, any argument for our “right to privacy” is empty if we continually violate this right by publicly posting such unflattering, personal visuals.
For some reason, many employers correlate the things we do in our spare time with our time spent working, regardless of how they actually affect work performance. Put simply, I have yet to know an employer who is against profiling prospective workers online.
I once asked a previous employer, who was sorting through a small stack of resumés, whether or not the hiring process would stop at the cover-letter stage. The hasty reply was: “Are you kidding? We have to check them out online first.”
While we may disagree with employers’ reasoning, we cannot force them to stop screening online profiles.
This was unsurprising to me; his second comment, however, was: “I’ll make sure to get my daughters to Facebook them and tell me who they think is best.” This shows not only employers’ intent for undercover examination, but also the extent to which carelessness and unprofessionalism can play a role in doing so.
While we may disagree with employers’ reasoning, the fact of the matter is there is no way we can stop this from happening. We are confident individuals who are conscious of our rights, but cannot force employers to stop defacing proper hiring technique.
Some would say we are completely powerless to stopping them. But we are not. We do have power over ourselves in controlling how we look online. And this, I can safely state, is the only way to avoid the judgmental eyes of employers.
I understand that we want to make ourselves look popular, that party photos with all our friends are of utmost importance, that videos of us doing embarrassing things convey the cool “rebellion” that is so dear to our young adult society. But at what cost? Would you rather look good, or have an actual job?
While employers may be in the wrong, we can be as well. So if you want to find work, delete all of your unflattering photos, heavily monitor your privacy settings, and make yourself respectable to the eyes of the public. Save the videos and stories for somewhere else, as your income could seriously be at stake.
