Friends and family may not be the only ones clicking on your Facebook page

Website screen with question related to online reputation. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

College applications, demanding course load, sports practice, extra-circular activities, and a busy social life. Looks like those fun and rebellious summer night’s are sadly in the past for now, safely stored away in a Facebook album. But are they really safe? Are they really in the past? Continue Reading

College Admissions Officers Using Facebook, MySpace, and Other Social Networking Sites to Block Students

It has been pretty well documented that about 75 percent of employers admit to looking at information that candidates post to Facebook, MySpace, and other web pages as part of the hiring process. In other words, today’s college students and recent graduates are often finding in their race to find career opportunities that the finish line is being blocked by the risqué photos or stories about drunken parties that they or their friends posted on-line. What has not been as well documented is that the this same generation is often finding that the starting line is also blocked.
A recent study by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth found that 25 percent of college admissions offices admit to using search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN to research potential students and that 20 percent look for the same information on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. The reality is that the percentages must be even higher because colleges and universities have little incentive to overstate their reliance on these digital dirt web searches but they have a significant incentive to understate their use due to a fear of negative public relations and likely backlash from many Gen Y candidates who view information that they post to MySpace and some of the other social networking sites as somehow being private even though it is accessible through a quick Google search.

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