So you modeled lingerie and the photographer posted the shots on his website. Or you ranted about your former employer on your MySpace. Or your friend posted a photo of you after you had a few too many at a party five years ago.
 
So what? What you do in your private time is your own business right?
 
Wrong.
 
Digital dirt is derailing an increasing number of job searches, as recruiters’ use of search engines increase, according to research conducted by ExecuNet, a career and business networking organization.
 
A recent update of exhaustive research compiled by the company revealed that the influence of online research on hiring is on the rise: while 2005 saw 75 per cent of recruiters use search engines to learn more about candidates, with 26 per cent eliminating candidates based on what they found, that number rose to 83 per cent, with 43 per cent eliminated based on online findings last year.
 
"For better or worse, the internet provides recruiters and employers with a wealth of unfiltered information that’s used to help evaluate candidates," says ExecuNet CEO Dave Opton. "From a candidate’s perspective, there’s no question that managing your reputation online is as important as it is offline."
 
Still, young job seekers are just waking up to the idea that their online profiles may be damaging their job chances, says Jennifer Kushell, president and co-founder of YSN.com, an online career site for young adults, and co-author of the New York Times best seller, Secrets of the Young & Successful.
 
"We just finished a study of graduating students from 50 countries that we’ll be releasing in the fall, and while these are not yet final numbers, our tabulations to date have shown that more than a quarter of them said that there is ‘definitely or probably something online about them that they would not want their parents or employers to see,’" says Kushell, whose own company recently rejected a candidate after Googling her.
 
"Our head of operations asked this girl in for an interview for an operations position, but then he Googled and her MySpace profile popped up. The first song that started playing was Crazy Bitch by Buckcherry, and then there were long rants about her current employer with plenty of expletives," relates Kushell. "Our head of operations emailed her and withdrew the offer for the interview and then recommended that she put her MySpace settings on private, as the page would be very damaging to her in her job hunt. An hour later she had taken the stuff down, but she also wrote back to tell us how terrible it was that we were rejecting her based on something that was on her personal profile."
 
Companies have the right to do background checks on the net, says Toronto-based employment lawyer and newspaper columnist Daniel Lublin. He recently represented a young woman who lost her employment offer when the pharmaceutical company she was working for found photos of her posing in lingerie on the internet.
 
"We settled, but she still didn’t get the job," says Lublin, adding, "The only area of concern would have been if the employer had made a discriminatory decision not to employ the candidate based on factors protected under the Charter of Human Rights."
 
Under the charter, employers can’t discriminate against a potential employee based on their race, religion, sexual orientation etc. Of course, proving an employer has made a hiring decision on such grounds is near impossible, especially if the decision is made as a result of an online search.
 
Employers can candidates based on their 'character', points out Lublin, adding the employer can make that determination based on web search findings. "There is no law in Canada prohibiting employers from accessing publicly available information," says the employment lawyer.
 
So is the person interviewing you going to perform a search the moment you leave their office? Few recruiters will openly admit to Googling candidates, but that doesn’t mean they’re not doing it.
 
"It’s not something that’s officially used during recruiting but it is emerging as a practice," says Donna Smith, VP of Career Edge, a non-profit organization. The Career Edge internship program arranges internships between Canadian graduates who need entry-level experience and employers who need bright, young talent. "Student job seekers should keep in mind that a recruiter is not going to be impressed by a photo on the internet of, let’s say, a girl in a bikini top or a guy wearing a beer-chugging hat."
 
It’s all about demonstrating good judgment on what’s business appropriate, says Smith, adding recruiters may not even bother looking at a résumé that’s been sent by someone with an email like sweetheart @ hotmail.com.
 
Students should also be careful when Googling companies they’re interested in, she adds. "I witnessed one case, where a student being interviewed told the recruiter they had something in common because they both went to the same university," says Smith. "The recruiter did not react well. After all, the recruiter was there to interview the student, not the other way around." jp