Do Candidates Need an Online Makeover? By Elizabeth Dameron-Drew, Town & Country Resources
Do your Candidates think that their e-mail address or the information on their MySpace profile won’t impact their ability to get a job?
They need to think again.
While having an online profile is all the rage and everyone has an e-mail account, the details of this information could be more important to your Candidates’ professional image and your agency than you or they realize…
(While this is based on a true story, the names and details have been changed. The actual family and Nanny were not associated with Town & Country Resources.)
Allyssa thought she’d found her dream Nanny job. In her first meeting with the family there was an immediate connection and sense of comfort. The three workdays she did as a trial time went perfectly. The salary was great, it was a 15-minute commute from her house and the five-year-old boy shared her love of soccer.
The family also thought they’d found their dream Nanny and were just pulling together the details of the offer when they decided to do a little internet searching on her. Sure enough, they found a MySpace account open to the public. Not only did she talk in detail about the crazy all-night parties on a recent trip to Mexico with her friends, but also talked at length about the family she used to work for and specifically about the list of things that bugged her about the job.
For the family, it was a rude awakening. They were shocked by the information regarding her personal life. The lack of overall good judgment and discretion related to her previous employers’ privacy was inexcusable. They now knew two things, that Allyssa wasn’t getting the job offer and that internet research would now be part of what they would do on each potential hire.
Your Candidate might think they are okay because they don’t happen to have a MySpace profile, but don’t forget about the rest of their public image. A simple search on Google or Yahoo! may reveal things they would prefer not to have revealed.
Is their e-mail address suggestive or otherwise unprofessional?
Does their voice mail greeting have music or anything other than a brief, professional and short voice message?
If they do have a profile on MySpace or Facebook, they should make it private by requiring pre-approved viewers to log in. (This is a simple setting they can do on their MySpace account.) As an agency, you may want to add checking candidates’ online information into your due diligence process.
Especially when searching for a job, candidates need to take the time to make sure their public image is something they’re proud of. You never know who will be checking into this information and it could cost them a job.
March 17th, 2007 at 10:43 am
This is a great article and so true!
One of the things to do when “Googling” a candidate is to put their name in quotes. That way the search is more targeted. Actually, this is true for any search you do. For instance the search “Jane Doe” will produce better results than just Jane Doe (without the quotes). Then you won’t have to sift through all the Jane Mathews or Christy Doe’s out there.