“Do you recall saying, ‘Time isn’t wasted when your getting wasted & I love drunk girls’ two years ago on your Facebook?” asks an angry possible future employer. You slowly stammer through a response saying, “I was a sophomore in college, we were just joking around.” Too bad you didn’t cleanse your Facebook of embarrassing information that could cost you a potential job. Instead, you have been deemed a risk because you admitted you like drunken girls.
It seems that since Facebook became popular it also became a threat to one’s ability to be hired for a job. “Be careful what you put on Facebook” has become a constant warning from parents, guidance counselors and the career center for graduating students.
The funny thing about this hypocrisy and judgment of what we put up on Facebook is that Facebook wasn’t around when most of the people hiring you were applying for jobs. If it had been, we all know they would have been excluded for the same photos and wall posts that they in turn use to exclude us. It seems that nobody has a sense of humor anymore, and if you dare have a sense of humor, it cost much more then it ever did before thanks to the Internet.
I’m not suggesting that you should go all Charlie Sheen on your Facebook. When Mark Zuckerberg thought about transplanting college social life onto the Internet, he didn’t realize that he would be moving the parts that aren’t appropriate for the Internet, as well as the harmless parts. Since that happened, Zuckerberg has been trying to give us privacy settings to combat those who will object to what we place on our Facebook for our friends to see.
What about those people who say you shouldn’t put it on Facebook if you wouldn’t have it out in your living room? That’s a very solid argument for those who have recently joined Facebook and don’t realize that before anyone could join, it was a sacred place to share your Friday nights with your friends and keep in touch. The bastardization of Facebook has proven, however, that pictures for the living room is the safest route to go for those seeking jobs for which background checks are required.
For those of you who wish to keep every picture of you making out with the Dubra bottles on your Facebook, you’re taking a risk. I don’t disagree with you for reserving the right to put what you want on Facebook, just make sure you master the treacherous ways of privacy settings.
Students can complain all they want about the hypocrisy or the unfairness of those who don’t understand Facebook judging. Your complaints are valid however. Facebook has made such a transition from being a forum solely for college students to a window for the outside world, making dorm rooms as public as living rooms. So if you wouldn’t show it to your grandmother, sadly, it better not be on your Facebook.
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