Skeptic Project

What employers look for when they research you online

Graduation ceremonies are over and new job hunters are in the market. But it's not just the resume that is being looked at, it's everything you ever did or said on the Internet.

It's easy to forget that what you say or do on a site like Facebook is being recorded and associated with your name. But it is part of your permanent record and it can be used against you. Eighty percent of employers do at least some searching of candidates online.

We talk to Max Drucker, CEO of a company called Social Intelligence, which is hired by employers to screen the online history of people looking for work. If Social Intelligence discovers a racist comment, a violent tendency, illegal drug use, they take a screen shot and have an employee evaluate the context of the message. From there, they pass on potentially incriminating material in a report to the client. If this results in someone being denied employment, the applicant can look at the same report and appeal what's on there.

Drucker says that the search is limited to what is publicly available. So if you've set your Facebook privacy to not allow non-friends to see what you have to say, then you'll have somewhat more protection. But if a friend tags you in a photo doing something embarrassing, that's fair game (unless you go in and remove the tag).

We also talk to Michael Fertik, founder and CEO of Reputation.com, an online reputation management company. He says 70 percent of employers have denied someone employment based on what they've found online. And all employers may soon have a lot more material to sift through: "Until recently, facial recognition technology was not on the scene. It became very possible very fast in the last 12 months. Now it's going to be pervasive in the next 12 months. Therefore, that photo you thought was anonymous due to being obscure because it wasn't tagged, will be tagged with a machine and will now surface when people look for you."

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/06/22/tech-report-what-employers-look-for-when-they-research-you-online/