Mitrano's message included the now standard warnings that material posted on Facebook may end up in the hands of campus administrators or potential employers but it went much further than that. Mitrano's message also emphasizes that any item posted to Facebook may be accessible to employers and others forever because search engines such as Google cache (keep copies) of content.

Miltrano's statement concludes with a final warning that Cornell does not monitor Facebook for content or even provide students with specific guidelines on what to post and what not to post because Cornell believes that its students are young adults and therefore must take responsibility for their actions. While I have no doubt that Cornell believes that, I also believe that Cornell's lawyers would much prefer to see the responsibility for reviewing content in the hands of the person posting the content rather than in a University official for that would open the University up to some liability should they fail to properly warn a student that the content they posted may create a problem. By taking a hands-off approach, Cornell is also taking a keep-your-hands-out-of-my-deep-pockets approach.

Now let's switch gears and talk about the risks to employers who use Facebook as part of their background checking process. In addition to the terms of service clearly prohibiting the site from being used by employers because such use would be a commercial purpose, consider the reaction of students on-campus were they to discover that an employer is using Facebook as part of their hiring process to screen out candidates who have what the employer considers to be objectionable profiles. Many and perhaps most students still believe that the only people using Facebook are other students so students post information with little regard to the consequences. They believe that writing about their partying makes them look cool and will help them win friends. While that may be true, it is also true that employers are using Facebook and even though most employers would not object to students writing about a fun party, they would object to hiring a student who writes about getting drunk, passing out, etc.

Now here is where it gets a little trickier. Suppose the content posted by the student isn't true. Suppose they're just embellishing. Students tell me that most of the profiles contain some truth, some half-truths, and some not-even-close-to-be-truths. Should an employer decline to hire an otherwise qualified candidate because they embellished or even made up stuff about themselves? Employers tell me that it often isn't so much the truth of the statement that concerns them. Even more than that is the lack of judgment that is exhibited when someone posts that type of information about themselves on-line. No employer wants to hire someone who exhibits poor judgment and I believe that they are right to infer that candidates who exhibit poor judgment about themselves are likely to exhibit poor judgment about matters related to their employment.

Not tricky enough? Okay, how about this? An employer declines to hire a candidate because of information the employer finds on Facebook and the intern or whatever employee found the information rats out the employer. They take it upon themselves to be whistleblowers. What do you suppose the reaction of the students on-campus will be? Outraged. Whether they have a right to be or not, they will be. And guess which organization will suffer? The one that was attempting to protect itself by using Facebook in the first place.

Employers who are engaged in hiring college students and recent graduates understand that college hiring is strategic. To be successful, they must build relationships with the faculty, staff, and administration on their target campuses as well as with the students. (See the recently published How to Create a Successful College Recruiting Program white paper available for free download at CollegeRecruiter.com.) But employers who use Facebook as part of their background checking process or to otherwise screen candidates run the very real risk of losing their status as an employer-of-choice and instead become a pariah on campus. Given the lack of reliability attached to the content to begin with, that very real risk is simply not a risk worth taking.