Who's looking at your Facebook profile?

Stephanie Damon-Moore Assistant Life Editor

Facebook has infiltrated the lives of American college students and is now spreading to people of all ages and from all over the world. While MySpace has roughly twice as many members as Facebook, the site that began as a resource for college students only is now growing by about 200,000 members per day and is gaining the loyalties of many MySpace users turned off by excessive spam.

But users beware: The people looking at your profile may not just be love interests and friends; they may be employers. A recent study showed that 44 percent of employers are looking at sites like MySpace and Facebook to research applicants, and 39 percent check up on current employees through these sites. Incriminating pictures, messages from friends, or descriptive information could be detrimental to a person’s ability to get or keep a job.

College admissions counselors are also increasingly turning to social networking sites such as Facebook to scope out prospective students.

“Vassar searches don’t include Facebook, but definitely at other colleges people use Facebook more,” said former Assistant Director of Admissions Edgar Thomas. Thomas, mentioned that conservative schools are more likely than liberal schools such as Vassar to use Facebook to weed out underage drinkers or students with otherwise incriminating information on their profiles.

But students, job applicants and professionals are devising their own methods for keeping their proverbial skeletons in the closet. Assistant Director of Campus Activities Megan Habermann uses profiles on two different social networking sites to separate her professional and private lives.

“My Facebook account has always been a way for me to do my job better and communicate with students in a way that students feel most comfortable,” she said. This way she can present a professional image to students and staff at Vassar and maintain a personal profile in a different location.

Habermann was grateful for her “clean” Facebook profile when applying for jobs. “Facebook is becoming a big part of job searches nowadays,” Habermann said.

Employers will often add an applicant as a friend, which can create a dilemma for the applicant who does not have a clean profile. Either the applicant rejects the friend request, sending an obviously negative message to the employer, or they run the risk of offending the employer with information in their profiles.

Increasing privacy options allow users to maintain a profile appropriate for all audiences. Another approach to dodging ouside eyes—one employed by Evan Altshuler ’09—is to change your name.

“When I was applying for jobs and internships, I didn’t want everyone who was looking to hire me to too easily be able to find out all my dirty little secrets,” Altshuler said. “So Evan Altshuler became Evan Alt. My friends knew it was me, but the real world had no idea.”

Although employers and admissions counselors may use social networking sites to make decisions about hiring or accepting applicants, the legal boundaries of this practice remain unclear. While legislation hasn’t been designed specifically for social networking sites, employers run various risks when taking information from the sites into account during a job search.

Companies are more likely to be accused of discrimination based on race, sexual orientation, and age when research about a candidate’s personal life is conducted through online media. And while laws requiring employers to inform applicants of background checks are written specifically to address the accumulation of information like driving records and criminal histories, experts recommend that the same notification be given when employers search for candidates online.

Regardless of the legality of these searches, the truth remains that many employers are taking advantage of the internet’s wealth of information. While Facebook and similar sites are a fun way to communicate with friends, users should bear in mind that their profiles are both personal expressions and public personas.

“The internet is a public forum, and you don’t know who’s out there,” said Habermann.

So un-tag the beer pong pictures and add “community service” to your interests. A self-conscious Facebook profile is now an important aspect of a résumé.