Beware: MySpace and Facebook Profiles Can Ruin a Career

Another example of the power of social media. Beware those of you job seekers out there who may have a provocative MySpace or Facebook page. Recent studies are showing that more and more recruiters and companies are looking at candidates social networking sites during the hiring process.

From the article:

The majority of executive recruiters — a whopping 83.2 percent — use search engines to learn more about candidates, and nearly half of these recruiters have eliminated candidates because of something questionable they uncovered — three times as many as in 2005, according to a recent survey of 100 executive recruiters conducted by ExecuNet, a job-search and recruiting network.

Factors in eliminating candidates range from criminal convictions, inappropriate pictures on MySpace or Facebook, hobbies listed such as “I like to drink,” and weird personal habits, according to the ExecuNet survey data.