More Warnings Against Oversharing on MySpace 383
Skapare writes "Your next prospective employer might be watching your MySpace page, according to a story at the New York Times. And if you think Facebook is more private, maybe not if that prospective employer has an intern from the same school checking up on you." From the article: "Students may not know when they have been passed up for an interview or a job offer because of something a recruiter saw on the Internet. But more than a dozen college career counselors said recruiters had been telling them since last fall about incidents in which students' online writing or photographs had raised serious questions about their judgment, eliminating them as job candidates."
Come on (Score:2, Interesting)
Some people need spines.
Overhype, Inc? (Score:2, Interesting)
It works both ways of course (Score:5, Interesting)
You might find that the higly professional lady wearing a smart business suit spends her weekends dressed up in strange clothing and hanging around with a motorcycle gang, to pick a real example at random.
Not only your (future) employer is watching.. (Score:3, Interesting)
""I AM continually shocked and appalled at the details people voluntarily post online about themselves." So says Jon Callas, chief security officer at PGP, a Silicon Valley-based maker of encryption software. He is far from alone in noticing that fast-growing social networking websites such as MySpace and Friendster are a snoop's dream.
New Scientist has discovered that Pentagon's National Security Agency, which specialises in eavesdropping and code-breaking, is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks. And it could harness advances in internet technology - specifically the forthcoming "semantic web" championed by the web standards organisation W3C - to combine data from social networking websites with details such as banking, retail and property records, allowing the NSA to build extensive, all-embracing personal profiles of individuals."
Full story at: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg19025
Same problem with UseNet (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, at that time we were quite naive and none of us realised what the Internet would turn into.
When Google released the Usenet archives for searching I had to scamper to get all my posts (hundreds of them) removed from the archive, as my employers would probably not have been too pleased - for a week or so my name in the google search engine produced thousands of posts none of which I am proud of now.
Re:It works both ways of course (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you mean protective stuff, leathers or tough textiles or whatnot? The kind of thing anyone with a quarter of a brain should be wearing if riding a motorcyle?
Or do you mean she's wearing LARPing gear on the weekends, and for some reason the 'gang' doesn't send her far, far away?
Re:There's something to this, in fairness. (Score:3, Interesting)
Smart people often break taboos: Richard Feynman loved strip clubs and Paul Erdös took amphetamines, to name but a couple.
I think your first statement had it right:-
Most employers don't want to hire people who rock the boat they want warm bodies that do the job their asked to do. Given the choice of Richard Feynman, a known stoner and a guy in a smart suit and tie, they will go for the suit and tie almost every time. Feynman would be great to have round the office playing the bongos and being insightful, but productivity would plumit and he'd make a rotten DB admin.
elpapacito, may introduce The Real World (Score:3, Interesting)
The simple fact is that what you describe as wrong is just the way it is. You can try to change it and you may be successfull, after all the days women were considered totally incapable of doing anything but be mothers and nurses is long gone (says a while middle aged male who thinks a glass ceiling is nice for letting in natural light) so maybe one day this will change too.
Maybe one day nude photos of a famous person will not have every tabloid drooling. Maybe one day a politician can freely admit to have smoked pot. Maybe one day not every word you say will be weighed on a silver scale.
For now the practical terms is that you either carefully examine everystep you take OR be prepared to accept that someday somebody might hold it against you.
You can rant against it for all you want but that does not change the way things are now. I got long hair, almost to my ass and I am male. Not really for fashion, I just like it. The price I pay is that I have been invited several times by high profile companies for job interviews based on previous work they have seen of me. When they then get a look off me their jaws literally drop.
I am good, they like my work but to the suits long hair like mine just doesn't work. Is it wrong? Not really. It is my choice to have long hair and it is their choice not to hire people that don't fit their idea of a well groomed employee.
As for my co-worker (well actually she is a manager of a different department and I only took notice off it because this piece of gossip included nudie pics) she will just have to accept that all men are pigs and all women are vindictive bitches. I personally couldn't care less but that is probably why I am not management at middle age. She is finding that something she did ten years ago is now biting her in the butt. Oh sure she may do wonderfull work and there is that email that circulated with her in the buff. Also up for a promotion is a guy who does not have nudie pics circulating.
You would claim the past of a person makes no difference. But does it?
My long hair is perhaps a way of me saying that I am not like everyone else. A rebel or just a social misfit? Perhaps I just can't be bothered with convention? Whatever the reason you think up it might be enough for you to consider me too big a risk to hire.
Same with the woman appearing nude in a play. As I pointed out this is something that a lot of woman do for the sake of art while all the male artists keep their clothes on. For me this suggests these women lack a certain amount of logic. Wouldn't it be more arty to keep the women clothed and the men naked? If you look at all those pics of girls caught naked circulating in your email don't you notice how rare it is to see the guy, even if he is in the pic great care has usually been taken to obscure the face.
Don't any of these girls who pose ever ask the guy to pose for them? If you want to be save as a girl posing nude just ask the guy to pose naked for you so when he releases your photographs you can release his.
That no women does this suggests to me women ain't paranoid enough and I would never hire any person as a system administrator who isn't 100% paranoid. Cause on the web they really are out to get you.
Re:Not only MySpace... (Score:2, Interesting)
Not just MySpace... (Score:5, Interesting)
In it he had written...
-That he was currently suspended from work for misuse of IT equipment.
-That his current duties were less technical than the impression he'd given in the interview.
-That he wasn't really interested in the position we were offering and would be hoping to leave within a few months.
Needless to say he didn't get the position.
His blog also went into some detail about his sexual fetishes. This wouldn't have been a reason not to employ him, but it might have made things a bit awkward in the office especially with him not knowing we knew and such.
Re:It's as much the employer's loss here (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
First Hand Experience (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's as much the employer's loss here (Score:1, Interesting)
Of course, the rest of my web site is pretty inoffensive. There are a few pictures of a party but I don't list my interests as including "smoking blunts" on the home page.
I yawn. (Score:2, Interesting)