70% of Employers Rejected Applicants Based on Online Info

For many of us, social networking is increasingly becoming an integral part of our lives. Are you on Facebook, or any other service like it? How often do you check it? Chances are that if you do use a social networking site, you check it daily, and in the cases of some socialite networkers, you may never be disconnected from it. There’s nothing particularly wrong with that, but there are caveats to watch out for.

The biggest one has existed for as long as the Internet itself has. As soon as you post something online, it’s there to stay. You may personally remove some bit of data you no longer want to be seen by anyone else online, but chances are that by that time, it’s already too late. If you do happen to upload something that you later regret, the best course-of-action is to just suck it up, and realize the fault of your ways.

Five years ago, or even longer, few people truly cared about what they posted online, whether it be a very inappropriate rant, or photos of you getting some major attention from a stripper at a bachelor’s party. Today, anything you post online can be found by someone, and in the case of a job search you may be on, don’t simply brush off the fact that the company you’re hoping to get into won’t look you up on Facebook, because the practice of doing just that is growing at a stark rate.

Just how common is it for an employer to reject an applicant based on what it found on someone when searching online? I admit, the number is much, much higher than I expected: 70%. Yes, according to a survey, 70% of employers have rejected a potential hire due to information found online. I’ll be the first to say that what you do outside of work has absolutely nothing to do with your work ethic, but to an employer, it doesn’t matter.

So, as tempting as it may be to upload a photo of yourself downing your own bottle of Smirnoff, you may want to think twice about it. One of my good friends had major concerns about his Facebook account when he aimed for a rather serious position, but it had nothing to do with what he himself uploaded, but what others would potentially upload. There are many angles, so when looking for a new job, you may want to clean up your online life.

In a survey of Web-surfers, human resource workers, and employment recruiters across the U.S., U.K., Germany and France, researchers found that, although most people acknowledge that their personal online behavior may have ramifications in their professional lives, comparatively few actually consider that fact when publishing photos or posts online. A full 70-percent of surveyed HR workers in the U.S. admitted to rejecting a job applicant because of his or her Internet behavior.