Facebook Is Fun for Recruiters, Too

Could you pass a Facebook background search?

The next time you apply for a job, don't be surprised if you have to
agree to a social-media background check. Many U.S. companies and
recruiters are now looking at your Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and other
accounts and blogs -- even YouTube -- to paint a clearer picture of who
you are.

"Almost all employers do some form of background screening because
they have to avoid negligent hiring," says Max Drucker, chief executive
of Social Intelligence, a consumer-reporting agency. "An employer has an
obligation to make the best effort to protect their employees and
customers when they hire."

Scott Thigpen

And now the Federal Trade Commission
has decided that companies that research how you spend your personal
time and what your passions and hobbies are do not violate your privacy.
The agency recently investigated Social Intelligence, which scours the
Internet for the information, pictures and comments you freely share
with the world and sells it to your potential employers. The FTC found
the company compliant with the Fair Credit Reporting Act. In other
words, the Internet is fair game.

"When someone puts their public life out there publicly, it's there
to be evaluated," says Kim Harmer, a partner at Harmer Associates, a
Chicago-based recruiting firm. "You find out lots of things about people
just by Googling them."

You can breathe a sigh of relief about those party pictures plastered
all over your Facebook -- most employers and consumer-reporting
agencies will look past them, unless, of course, you're underage. "I
look at their Facebook and see how they approach what they put on it,"
Ms. Harmer says. "Is it immature? Appropriate or inappropriate? I'm not
judging their activity but looking at how they communicate what they do
and their thoughts and their judgments to the public as a reflection of
what they will do with clients and team members."

Mr. Drucker only searches for what the companies direct him to find
and stays away from giving employers information that might be
considered discriminatory to the hiring process. Employers, for example,
cannot legally make hiring decisions based on race, religion, marital
status or disability. But they can make decisions based on whether or
not they like your attitude or your ethics.

A Social Intelligence report to a company
would include racist remarks, sexually explicit photos or videos, or
flagrant displays of weapons or illegal activity, Mr. Drucker says. And
your decision to post a naked picture of yourself might not go over well
with a potential employer. "That might not be relevant to the job, but
an employer gets to determine if that's the kind of person he wants
representing his company," Mr. Drucker says. "We don't make the
decisions. We just generate the reports."

He says he has been surprised by how many racist comments and
flagrant displays of drug use people post online. "It's not just smoking
marijuana. It's snorting cocaine, talking about doing Ecstasy on
Twitter or a forum or message board, showing it in photos or
video-sharing sites," he says.

Some companies are mining photo- and video-gathering sites using
facial-recognition software. If you were among those rioting in the
streets of Vancouver after the National Hockey League championship, for
example, a potential boss could find you the same way the police tracked
down those responsible for some of the bedlam -- in the pictures.

"We are going from the Web being a place of extraordinary anonymity
to a place where your every movement could be traced if someone's taking
pictures of you and posting them," says John Challenger, chief
executive of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an
outplacement-consulting firm. "Job seekers need to be careful because of
that," so they don't make a mistake and lose a job as a result, he
says.

They also need to know that not all companies use reporting agencies
like Social Intelligence. Some take a hodgepodge approach to mining your
data.

Here are some tips:

Make every effort to find out what's out there about you. Anything that may be taken out of context should be taken down.

Be concerned about the accuracy of what's gathered. Mr. Drucker says
his company looks at layers of social media to determine if the John
Brown it is looking at is the same John Brown that the company is
considering hiring. If his identity were stolen, John Brown's
information could be "correct" but inaccurate.

Remember that bits and pieces of you are at a number of other sites,
like LinkedIn, Craigslist or Foursquare, not to mention blogs, forums
and wikis that you might visit.

Check -- and frequently recheck -- your privacy settings on social-media accounts like Facebook and Twitter.

Create a positive online presence by putting your
r[eacute]sum[eacute] up on a site with your domain name or getting it on
forums of charitable organizations that you support.

If in doubt, consider hiring a company like Reputation.com to help you present, well, a better you.

Write to Jennifer Waters at jennifer.waters@dowjones.com