Many employers say they now check the online profiles of applicants during the hiring process. Some students say this affects what they post, but others say they don't care what their potential employer can see online.
Listen to University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire senior Paul Yanzer discuss employers accessing students' Facebook profiles.
Listen to UW-Eau Claire senior Adie Presto discuss why she's not worrying about employers viewing her site — yet.
Links:
Click here to access Facebook, a social networking site popular among students nationwide and in the Chippewa Valley.
Click here to read a similar article run April 11 in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
High-tech hiring: Employers check Facebook, experts say
By Lindsey Lewandowski
lewandla@uwec.edu
Maybe your mother always told you that it’s during your high school and college years that you’ll find out who your true friends are.
Facebook, a popular social networking site among students nationwide and in the Chippewa Valley, connects users to their “friends.” These friends could include a high school best friend, a sibling, a lab partner, a co-worker — and since a site expansion in September, an employer.
New data indicates that employers are taking interest in Facebook. That has career service directors such as Jeanne Skoug of the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, as well as other organizations, warning students to think about what they are posting and who their friends are. This warning and knowledge of the “Facebook expansion” to allow access to all has students nationwide self-censoring. Eau Claire students are no exception.
The trend
Educause, a nonprofit association that promotes the intelligent use of information technology, released a brochure entitled “7 things you should know about Facebook” in September. The association defines Facebook as a social networking site designed to connect its users to one another.
To create a profile, users — current students, faculty or staff and alumni — must have an e-mail address in the domain of an institution affiliated with Facebook, according to Educause. Open an account, and update as much as you’d like, adding or changing information. That information includes pictures, a list of favorites and blog-type entries. Browse profiles based on criteria such as age, relationship status or major, and search for friends.
According to its site, Facebook is the seventh most-trafficked site on the Web and is the No. 1 photo-sharing site online. Since its launching in February 2004, more than 12 million people have signed on as registered users in 40,000 regional, college, high school and work networks.
As of Sept. 26, the site has expanded to allow membership to anyone with a valid e-mail and an affiliation to an existing college or work network.
And while additional privacy controls were launched — allowing users to block other users in specific networks — that still means alumni in the workplace can access the site perceived to be mostly collegiate.
UW-Eau Claire and Chippewa Valley Technical College students are among Facebook’s college users. Students at Immanuel Lutheran, Memorial, North and Regis high schools use it too.
The draw
The Educause brochure lists some reasons why Facebook is significant. Creating or redefining one’s self-identity and values is an important part of college. So, for many college students who want to know who they are and how they relate to their peers, Facebook can be a tool.
But one of Facebook’s downsides, Educause warns, is that it is public — even though to users posting messages for their peers and pictures, it may seem like a private forum.
“Although some students understand how and when to separate private from public content, many lack the discretion to present themselves — and others — appropriately online,” according to Educause.
The potential problems
Skoug said more and more employers regionally and nationally are checking Facebook while they’re interviewing college students.
She didn’t specify which ones in the Eau Claire area were considering profiles during the application process.
Doing so is an active decision on the part of employers to keep their fingers on the pulse of what’s happening in the college community, she said.
“Believe me, it’s a topic we talk about a lot,” said Skoug, who constantly works with employers looking to hire college students as interns. She said she also attends regional and national conferences, and Facebook comes up there, too.
“I think anytime I’m talking with an employer or an employer is talking with a Career Services spokesperson, we tend to talk about the whole hiring process,” she said.
Part of that process, she said, is making sure students know they should concentrate on coming off as positively as possible. Their presentation during the interview — as well as their presentation online and off — is something students should think about.
She warned them to be aware of what they’re posting on Facebook and on similar social networking sites. The rule of thumb she offered is that if students wouldn’t want their mother to see posted items, those items don’t belong online.
“Web people can access things that sometimes you’re not aware they can access,” she said. “And once it’s out there, it’s out there.”
Skoug said anything can be problematic, especially photos and wall comments — messages users leave for one another that anyone who has access to their profile
can see.
Educause echoes, “Some employers look up students on Facebook to get a fuller picture of applicants.
“Not all Facebook profiles result in positive outcomes for the students,” it warns.
The National Association of Colleges and Employers recently conducted a study in which it determined that more than one in 10 employers who responded to a Job Outlook 2007 Fall Preview survey plans to review applicants’ social networking profiles. Of those who already do, more than 60 percent of employers say “the information gleaned there has at least some influence on their hiring decisions.”
Facebook officials did not return an e-mail sent last week asking for information regarding employers’ access to the site. Phone numbers were not listed online.
The hiring tool
Tom Pelissero is sports editor of the Leader-Telegram, Eau Claire’s city paper, which the Eau Claire Press Company publishes. The company is tied as the fifth-largest employer in the city.
Pelissero said he deals with applicants in the sports department, which had been looking to hire since he began working as the sports editor about four months ago.
The hiring process at the Leader-Telegram is a typical one, he said, including a review of an applicant’s references and résumé, as well as an interview. But then there are the online tools at Pelissero’s disposal — Google and Facebook. Often, when Pelissero googles writers, the search generates almost everything they’ve ever written. Facebook, he said, generates personal information people post without thinking about.
“(Facebook is) one of many tools,” said Pelissero, a Facebook user who graduated from Boston College in 2003.
“When I graduated, this was not something everybody had,” he said. Now, he said he thinks there’s a significantly low level of consciousness among users of what they’re putting online for all to see — something Pelissero attributed to how socially accepted Facebook has become.
“It’s the reality-television mentality,” he said, meaning users who post thousands of pictures and make hundreds of friends look like a star or a public figure to the online community.
While Pelissero said he won’t take into consideration an applicant’s favorite movie or TV show when he’s looking to hire, he does take into consideration what the person posts and how social he or she seems.
He tends to shy away from applicants who post they’re “the greatest sports writer,” as well as from the applicants who don’t have many friends.
“I would much rather have the person with 300 friends and 1,000 photos of themselves than the person with six friends who lists their friend as Jesus,” he said. “You want someone who you can work with.”
And part of the interview process, he said, is reading a person’s personality — whether that be over the phone or while scrolling through a Facebook profile.