Employees’ Racy & Risqué Postings Can Damage Your Business. It May Seem Private, but …
(June 2007) – “It can damage your company’s reputation if your employees, or someone you are recommending for a job, has an unprofessional online profile,” warns Annie Davis, president of the Association of Premier Nanny Agencies – A Household Staffing Alliance (APNA). A suggestive e-mail address or revealing post on a MySpace profile can kill a person’s chance of landing a job. “We’ve seen it happen to a number of nanny candidates, and it’s why we’re raising the red flag.”
Davis recounts the story of one set of parents that did an Internet search on a nanny they wanted to hire. It was a rude awakening when they found her MySpace account with details of drunken, all-night parties on her recent vacation to Mexico. But the real deal breaker was that she had written at length about the family she used to work for, listing things she didn’t like about them and the job.
Ellen Pack of Town & Country Resources, a childcare and household staffing agency in the San Francisco Bay Area, says her agency has added one more thing to its screening process - an Internet search of each potential job candidate’s name. “We will not represent candidates who have an unprofessional online persona. We advise them to keep their private lives private.” Candidates who make it through Town & Country’s screening process are reminded to mind their online P’s & Q’s forever.
Here are the tips Town & Country gives to the people it sends out for job interviews:
- If your e-mail address is suggestive or otherwise unprofessional, change it.
- Make sure your voicemail greeting has only a brief, professional message during your job search.
- If you have an Internet page or profile, make it private and available only to pre-approved viewers. (It’s a simple setting on MySpace.)
January 28th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Great post! Good that it has been noted as we’ve certainly received many resumes throu email from applicants. Unfortunately for some - regardless of how weel the resume was put together - they did not get the call back.