It’s Friday night. You’re Downtown. You’re having a good time with your friends. Someone pulls a camera out. You raise your glasses and cheer as the camera temporarily blinds you. Chances are those pictures will surface sometime the next day, sitting on your Facebook. The average person has at least 100 pictures, but most aren’t ones to be hung over the family mantle. Our nights of debauchery are on display for the public to view.
Most of the time that isn’t a problem. But now that it’s job seeking time, you may want that epic keg stand picture away from the prying eyes of recruiters.
Bill McCarthy, associate director of the Career Development Center, had some startling news regarding the job search.
“[These Web sites] are a relatively new technology,” he said. “Employers are starting to learn about and use them. They’re looking at information in a public domain.”
Due to complaints from wary users, Facebook has upped the ante with privacy controls of their accounts, but it might not be enough.
According to a report by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, recruiters are searching Facebook for potential employees to determine if they are acceptable for their company based on aspects like groups, pictures and wall posts.
“You’re portraying an image,” McCarthy said. “Is this image one you want to portray to potential employers?”
Adam Holzberg, a senior history major, said he’s against the idea of Facebook being a factor in hiring.
“They’re invading your personal life,” Holzberg said. “They’re deciding if you should get a job based on your outside life. That shouldn’t be a qualification.”
There are steps to take to protect your profile and maintain a professional appearance. A picture is worth a thousand words. Don’t let it cost you thousands of dollars too.
1. Set your profile so that it’s only viewable to your network.
This works best with people who are only in one network. If you’re in the Binghamton University network and another network, that adds to the number of people who can view you. The New York, NY network has 1.2 million people. That’s a lot of prying eyes.
2. Make your profile viewable to only your friends.
Recruiters and potential new “friends” can still search you but can’t see any information other than your profile picture, name, networks and mutual friends, if any. This works well for being more private, but any pictures you have tagged by others can still be viewed by their friends/networks.
3. Privatize your pictures.
There are different ways you can go about this. First, you can decide which albums are public and private. This is achieved by going to the privacy tab, then the profile tab. You can also decide that no one but your friends can see pictures of you tagged in other albums. Your name will still be associated with the picture, but there’s no way to get from your profile to the tagged picture. You can do this by going to the profile tab and changing the “photos tagged” of you drop down. You could also just untag these pictures, but this allows you and your friends the ability to view your potentially embarrassing photos.
4. Get rid of it.
Just deactivate your Facebook until after you get the job. When your reactivate it, all of your settings will come back as they were.
Remember that even if you privatize or deactivate your Facebook, pictures of you could still resurface. Once it’s on the Internet, it’s pretty much fair game.