Beware Your Online Presence

Mz6 wrote to mention an article in the NY Daily News stating that an increasing number of employers are Googling their prospective employees during the interview/hiring process. From the article: "'A friend of mine posted a picture of me on My Space with my eyes half closed and a caption that suggests I've smoked something illegal,' says Kluttz. While the caption was a joke, Kluttz now wonders whether the past two employers she interviewed with thought it was so funny. Both expressed interest in hiring Kluttz, but at the 11th hour went with someone else."

Re:RTFA!

[LightningBolt!]

Apparently it's this one.

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/401069p-339 405c.html [nydailynews.com]

I don't think so.

[babbling]

Not entirely paranoid. I thought it was a well-known fact that employers Googled people when considering hiring them. I keep this in mind whenever I post anything that links me to my real name, though.

So create your own identity

[sphix42]

http://www.claimid.com/ [claimid.com] Thought up by a couple of ibiblio guys, creating a link resume/profile seems the way to go.

Re:It's not paranoia

[ePhil_One]

It's not hard to protect your information,

Problem is, once you've made that mistake its nigh impossible to go back and correct it in many cases. When I posted on usenet in the 80's the concept of a usenet archive that might be easily search seemed kind of out there. I think todays kids have a hard time understanding that in a few years they might not be proud of their hard partying lifestyle, etc.

Of course, today there's a whole new trail being developed by me thats beyond my control, but there's also others with my name and their own trails.

Re:Maybe he *was* smoking something

[PygmySurfer]

He's a she.

RTFBlog!

[pegr]

Yup, there it is (scroll down).
http://www.myspace.com/comeoncolleen [myspace.com]

I wouldn't have hired her

[staeiou]

If her employers checked her myspace, they most certainly would have not hired her.

Comments from her myspace [myspace.com]:
obviously (FTA): "hi, i'm colleen kluttz and i just smoked the. best. weed. everrrrrrr..."
"Best host ever! I like the part when you shake your boobies."
"pot brownies, colleen! POT BROWNIES!!!"
"if you lived here, i would have to quit my job and become a full time hang over nurse."
"i'd like to report that i just opened my purse at work and found a can of PBR inside. livin' large!!!" - PBR being Paps Blue Ribbon beer by the way
"chris's eyes = patriotic. stoned white and blue. come visit."


And the profile picture she picked herself that has her giving the finger to a camera doesn't help either.

If the incident in question (someone posted a pic of her looking high) was isolated, an employer might overlook it. But these comments suggest a heavy drinker/pot smoker. I personally don't care if someone drinks/smokes weed while not on the job, but these things in conjunction with the attitude that is expressed on her myspace is something more.

Re:Erm..

[PatHMV]

I hate to break it to you, but there's nothing illegal about a landlord discriminating against a tenant for being a DJ and a rave promoter. Landlords have no obligation to rent to anybody. Generally speaking, the only grounds for which they can't discriminate against you are race, gender, and age, and, in a few states and communities, sexual orientation.

Insufficient evidence

[xihr]

There really is nowhere near enough evidence to make this conclusion. Employers "express interest" and then change their minds "at the 11th hour" for lots of reasons. That's nowhere near evidence that they did so because of a joke image on your MySpace page.

Re:It's not paranoia

[wwwillem]

I, on the other hand, have a comparitively significant web presence and a unique name. I get over 9,000 hits on Google [google.com]

Talking about hyping resumes :-). Don't know which google you are using, but when I simply click your link, it's only 819 hits. And when adding quotes around your name --there's plenty of Joe's out there-- it goes back to 735.

Re:So what? They will anyway.

[Ohreally_factor]

Medical records are supposed to be protected in the U.S. (cf. HIPAA [hhs.gov]), and any employer who tried to obtain your medical records illegally would be in pretty big trouble if they got caught.

Court records are another matter. If your psychiatrist made a report to the court concerning your progress in a shoplifting matter, that might be part of public record if the judge didn't have it sealed. But in that case, your criminal record is going to be a much bigger deal than the psychiatrist report.

Re:Even if you don't link to your real name.

[utlemming]

Medical Records? Ever heard of HIPAA? If you had even the shred of evidence that you were turned down for a job because they had medical information about you contained in medical records, then you would own that company. It would mean that somehow they obtained the information illegally and someone disclosed the information illegally. The criminal liability for disclosure of a medical record is in the neighborhood of about $250,000 for each offense. Plus punitive damages. You could probably sue the company that has the record, the company that obtained it to the company the doctor that disclosed it (assuming they used an P.I.). And I wouldn't sign an agreement stating that an employer could have medical records unless there was a valid reason. Anybody in the business of medical records is paranoid of disclosing a medical record. Oh, by the way, under HIPAA, you own your medical records. Depending on what is in your medical record and why they turned you down you could sue for a HIPAA violation, ADA and all sorts of discrimination statutues. Frankly, I don't know if I would want work at a place that was using medical records as to exclude people.

However, under some circustainces I can understand the use of a credit record. For example if you are going to be handling sensative information or you are going to be doing finanaces, then it makes sense check the credit record. However, if there is no criminal record or even the hint of fraud exclusion because someone has a bad credit record would not be fair -- just because someone fell on hard times (there is no way telling why their credit record may be bad) means they won't be a good employee.

Frankly, I don't care if a potential employer knows information about me -- I don't have anything to hide. If they don't like my political views, my credit history, medical history, etc., then oh well. It probably isn't exactly the job for me in the first place. If they want the information, then they can ask me, and I'll provide it, freely.

(To any future employer, feel free to ask me the information you want and I'll give it to you straight up.)

Re:Simple to avoid.

[RickPartin]

You can remove old google groups and usenet posts from Google's archives with this page. http://groups.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?ans wer=8380 [google.com]

Re:It's not paranoia

[metlin]

Dear Joe,

Welcome to Search Engine 101.

You should search for "Joe Zbiciak" [google.com] and not Joe Zbiciak.

Doing the latter makes Google do an OR style search, resulting in a lot of results that just have Joe and Zbiciak in them, but not necessarily referring to you.

For instance, look at page 24 [google.com] of the search link that you provided - only 3 results in that page are Joe Zbiciak. Most refer to some Joe and refer to some other Zbiciak. Given the number of Joes in this world, this is not surprising.

On the other hand, a search within quotes narrows it down just to your name. This seems to bring up 891 results, lower than what even my name would bring up. ;-)

This is so utterly not on time!

[mattr]

I don't know about other slashdotters but I could have used this maybe when I was first starting out on the Source (forerunner to Compuserve) with my Apple II and Hayes 300 bps modem (you can read the words as they roll in).. But that was 25 years ago. To say this is common knowledge is an understatement. The problem is nobody gets taught this shit in elementary, middle or high school. I've watched what I typed online at way back to BBS days and as a matter of course google myself once in a while. Everyone is googling, so if you don't you are just going to voluntarily lose an edge. What is scary now is the same thing will be happening with video, and worse will come when ubiquitous video gets ubiquitously tagged and stored. We are just at a point in time between back then and that future time. Only big difference is myspace becoming popular among teenagers, ascent of google, and massively litigous society being warped by doublethinking neocons. I think that's all I want to say with this login.

this is not new

[rtphokie]

This is not new, the media just woke up to it. Probably because of recent controversies over MySpace and Facebook.

Before there was a web, employeers were searching USENET postings to see what applicants had been up to. The technical newsgroups are the most interesting as they can give some insight into how the person learns and how they might interact with others via email.

Is the applicant offering help to others? Are they asking questions? Are the questions getting better? A dumb question last year is a good thing as long as it isn't reapeated. A dumb question last week might indicate a problem, especially if it's about something they mention on their resume.

None of these things are end-all be-all evaluations of the person, especially since they are created over time. But they can give an interviewer some good ideas for questions.

It happened to me

[caudron]

True story:

I am an independent consultant. CBN (Yes, that CBN) is locally-based. They also have some very interesting and cool tech projects going on. Their IT group (a spin off of CBN called Compass) is working with some great stuff. Anyway, I happened to get a lead on an assignment there that I might be able to fill.

In the phone interview, I was gold. "You sound like just what we are looking for."

In the follow up technical phone interview, same thing. "We want you to meet the manager you'll be working with for this project."

The in-person interview is going great too, until I get this question:

"Have you ever worked with XSLT and related technologies?"

To which my dumb ass replied:

"Sure that's what I've based my blog on."

And I immediately saw the stupidity of my answer. Why? Because not a week earlier, I was having a discussion with a friend about Christianity's reputation. The result of that conversation is found in an entry on my blog here:

http://tom.digitalelite.com/2005_08_23_08_01_00.ht ml [digitalelite.com]

After I mentioned my blog, every one of the interviewers asked for the address. I gave it to them, knowing that entry was still on the front page at the time. I knew it was over. Sure enough, within 6 hours I get the call from HR telling me they needed someone with more c# experience. Hmmm, my c# experience was discussed in two interviews before the in-person interview and wasn't a problem then. Oh well.

Two things of note about this:

1) I don't censor my blog. If someone doesn't like the content on the blog, we probably wouldn't have gotten along anyway. It's a sort of self-selecting barrier for people without a sense of humor.

2) There are plenty of good IT consulting gigs out there. I'm on one right now. Redoing a .com site for a major company. In C#.

Note that I'm not speaking ill of CBN here. I really don't care one way or the other about them. It must not've been a good fit. No big deal to me. I've heard that that are a great place to do a short-term gig, but it just wasn't the best place for me in the end.