Do you think people are prepared for online profiles to do away with resumes?

I would do a search if I was hiring. And whether it is a person’s personal life or not, I would probably use the information to influence my decision. If you’re not smart enough to realize that I can find you by a simple google search, I dont really want to be hiring you. No, I dont think people are prepared and I think it’s going to take a while before it becomes common sense to put your profiles on private. This is not a subject people really address, even in career counseling. Give it a few more years, when a few more people are denied jobs, and I think it will bring more widespread awareness.

I think its a good way of getting to know your employees for real, but if I was the one trying to get a job. I would have to get rid of my profiles completely if this is what employers were doing! I have all kinds of things on there that could have me perceived as someone I’m not. Like, private jokes with my friends that someone else might take as something serious rather than a harmless joke. I have pictures on their that arent what I would say ‘slutty’ or ‘revealing’ but if my employer was quite old fashioned I think he/she would be un-impressed. But my facebook profile is completely private unless you’re my friend and as I’m so paronoid only a few selected friends can see my wall where comments are made. I think I would be safe, I hope.

I was in the Internet at my university years before the World Wide Web took off; back then about the only people on the ‘net were college students and engineers. I actually had an incident where after a heated exchange on Usenet news someone forwarded some of my more incendiary posts to my boss and asked if this was how they wanted our university represented and demanding that I be fired. My boss couldn’t care less what I posted on Usenet but I learned my lesson there. Anything you put on the net can be viewed by potential employers, love interests, or enemies. After that I cautioned people to be careful what they post but even I had no idea that deja news would save our articles forever.

On professional sites I post under my real name but on social sites I always use a pseudonym. This way I can discuss controversial issues without having to worry about who might read them.