Tuesday night a received an email via Facebook from a friend from college notifying me that I was tagged in a photo. As many of you on Facebook know, once you have been friended by a college or high school alum, you begin getting more requests from some folks you never thought you would hear from again. Of course Tuesday's photo of me was from a semester abroad when I was at Antioch — I was 21, smoking a cig and drinking a pint. The photo certainly brought back memories, made me laugh and then made me ask my friend to take it down. Since I speak to parents around the country about teens posting inappropriate photos or other content online, that photo could potentially damage my personal brand. And who knows, I may have to look for a job at some point again in the future…

I wanted to share that anecdote in the context of a story in today's Media Post about how many employers are actually looking at social networking profiles when screening candidates. When I was speaking to parents in Chicago, one of them confessed to me that they actually have a company in China that scours social networking sites to review potential candidates' profiles (i.e. is able to see "private" profiles). From the article:

A new CareerBuilder.com survey found that 22% of all hiring managers have combed through social media profiles to help evaluate potential hires, up from just 11% two years ago. HR execs from media and creative agencies like MediaVest and AKQA weighed in on the practice, identifying LinkedIn as their site of choice for new hire research…

…more than a third of employers that checked profiles said they had found content that disqualified a potential hire. The top three reasons for dismissal were that the person had posted info about themselves drinking or using drugs, posted inappropriate photographs, or showed that they had poor communication skills.

One more reason to talk to teens (and our own friends) about managing our online reputations.

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