Job Hunters, Beware: Mistakes Job Hunters Make Online

In the Wall Street Journal | Feb 2, 2010 | By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN

There's
been no shortage of warnings about the career dangers of posting racy
content on sites like Facebook and Twitter. Yet many job hunters still
don't heed that advice, and others don't realize they're doing just as
much damage by doing things like bending the truth or spamming their
résumés. Recruiters say such faux-pas can result in immediate and
lasting career damage.

"You're going to be remembered-and not
in a positive way," says Colleen McCreary, chief people officer for
Zynga Game Network Inc., a San Francisco developer of social games
including FarmVille. "Recruiters move around a lot from company to
company, and that can carry on with them for a long period of time."

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You won't get off the ground floor with these job hunting mistakes.

Ms.
McCreary says candidates consistently damage their reputations by
sending cover letters that disingenuously claim a specific position at
the company is their dream job. With a check of Zynga's
applicant-tracking system, she can see that those people submitted the
same letter for several other openings, too. "They've now lost all
their integrity," she says. As an alternative, she recommends that job
hunters write about the two or three positions they're most qualified
for in a single letter.

Job hunters also regularly flub by
submitting their résumés to multiple recruiters and hiring managers at
a single firm. "What they're doing is a huge turn off because it sucks
up a lot of time for people," says Ms. McCreary.

Likewise, job hunters repeatedly
derail their chances by applying for positions for which they don't
even meet the basic requirements. "There are a few people out there who
seem to see it fit to apply to every job we ever post," says Dan
Goldsmith, a managing partner at AC Lion, an executive-search firm in
New York. "Those people just go right in the trash folder."

There are also job hunters who
repeatedly send the same recruiters their résumés year after year,
which can give the impression that they're desperate or a job hopper,
adds Mr. Goldsmith.

Liars make up another category of
memorable job hunters. "People will say they graduated from [a] school
and you find out from looking online that... they just took a course,"
says Ms. McCreary.

Executive recruiter Russ Riendeau says
he checks candidates' résumés against their LinkedIn profiles and often
discovers discrepancies. "It's helping me assess whether candidate is
indeed who they say they are," says Mr. Riendeau, a partner at East
Wing Group, a search firm in Barrington, Ill. Résumés should tell a
candidate's full story, he says.

Meanwhile, many job hunters are also
continuing to overlook the dangers of posting provocative photos and
other dubious content on social-media sites. Case in point: Recruiter
Lori Fenstermaker says she lost interest in a recent candidate for a
legal-assistant job after finding her raunchy MySpace profile. "She
represented herself in a way that would not align with the company's
philosophy and ethics," says Ms. Fenstermaker, founder of Automatic
LLC, a search firm in Grand Rapids, Mich. "Anything someone publishes
online could knock a person out of the running per se."

There are also some job hunters who
are unwittingly going out of their way to spoil their prospects. Last
year, a candidate for a senior client-services position invited Mr.
Goldsmith to be part of his Facebook network. After accepting, the
recruiter found a semi-nude photo of the candidate, prompting Mr.
Goldsmith to withdraw this person from consideration. "It was so
horribly inappropriate," the recruiter recalls. "To flaunt that with
such a lack of sensitivity to professional decorum is very
disquieting."

Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com