Everyone loves a good wall comment on Facebook or a great tagged photo to impress someone from high school, right?
Potential employers, however, might not be as excited about your photo album of last weekend’s festivities or that you are a member of the group “I Was Absolutely Sh**faced When My Facebook Picture Was Taken.”
The University of Michigan’s Career Center recently sent an e-mail to students warning them that their online images can be seen by more than just their Facebook friends, according to an article from its student newspaper Michigan Daily.
Diane Fields ’07 made her Facebook account private when she began applying for summer internships.
“My mom warned me that some employers get access to Facebook and look at profiles to see if there is any incriminating information about potential interns and employees,” Fields said.
According to Facebook.com, any college student with a valid school e-mail address from one of the 2,500 colleges the site supports can obtain a Facebook account. College alums can therefore acquire accounts using their school e-mail addresses, as well.
Dennis Amrine, Interim Director of the Fairfield University Career Planning Center, likes the social networking opportunities that Facebook provides to students but feels that employers are wrong to use it.
“[Facebook] should not be utilized as a measure to evaluate a candidate,” Amrine said.
Amrine feels that students put on a different face through the cover letters and resumes they send to employers. They are not providing photos and information about marital status and age, which are things that should not have anything to do with the hiring status of a candidate, according to Amrine.
“Employers are generally accessing Facebook in one of two ways: through their own alumni e-mail accounts, or by having interns or other students access the profiles on behalf of the employer,” said Steven Rothberg, President and Founder of CollegeRecruiter.com.
“I think that it’s hugely inappropriate to ask current employees to use their accounts to look up students,” Fields said. “It’s unethical.”
According to Facebook’s terms of use, the site is for “personal, non-commercial use only.” Using Facebook to determine whether a student should be employed is definitely commercial use, according to Rothberg.
“Anyone who is using the site for commercial purposes is either purposely ignorant because they disregarded the terms of service or they are ignoring the terms of use,” he said.
Fields said Facebook should try to make some changes to prevent this from happening.
Rothberg agreed.
“Facebook is also responsible for taking reasonable steps to safeguard their system from abuse and that would include preventing employers from violating the terms of service,” he said.
While the situation might not be fair, Rothberg thinks that students should expect it to happen.
“I don’t love the idea of employers looking at Facebook accounts,” Fields said, “but at the same time, whatever information you provide about yourself on the Internet is available to everyone.”
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