Watch your digital dirt

“Digital dirt”: It’s a relatively new term used to describe the unprofessional, often risky and even potentially scandalous information and images that people post about themselves online, from pictures of intoxication-induced escapades to blog rants about anything from professors to politics. Central Michigan University Director of Career Services Julia Barlow Sherlock is available to comment on digital dirt and its consequences.
As social networking sites like Facebook (http://www.facebook.com) and MySpace (http://www.myspace.com) grow in popularity, particularly among college and high school students - and as more people feel comfortable posting life details, deeply personal thoughts, compromising photos and other information about themselves online - Sherlock says employers’ scrutiny of prospective employees’ pages on such sites will continue to increase as well. And, it is “a perfectly legitimate screening method because it’s self-reported,” she says.
A few of Sherlock’s initial thoughts on the subject:
· “The Career Guide that CMU Career Services distributes to students quotes a couple of startling statistics from an ExecuNet survey, which found that 75 percent of job recruiters have looked up information about candidates using Internet search engines; 26 percent had removed candidates from their screening pools based on the results of their searches.”
· “The best advice I can give is to be proactive. Don’t put it on the Internet if you wouldn’t want someone else to see it. Unfortunately, today’s young people often flirt with disaster until it’s completely out of their hands.”
· “If a prospective employer finds something negative, it’s too late. Someone else’s values and experiences come into play, and whatever he or she has found can influence hiring decisions.”
· “I was recently at a conference and heard about a student who lost out on a job at an insurance company because the company Googled her and found photos of her engaging in risky behavior.”