Keep your face off Facebook

[In response to Michael Silicz's "Dr. Jekyll tagged a photo of you on Facebook"]

I once agreed to go out with a guy who I didn’t know based on one great conversation with him. Before we went out though, I did a background check and discovered my potential boyfriend had been charged with a restraining order by a former girlfriend, and I cancelled the date.

Doing a background check may have killed the potential romance, but because it was my safety, I was right to check. Now with that example in mind, switch the perspective to that of a prospective employer, and it’s the same situation. They have their business and livelihood to consider when trying to fill a vacant position, so they are in every right to do background, reference, and webpage checks.

That’s right. Employers have every right to check out your MySpace and Facebook page and they’re doing it at an increasing number as younger, more technologically savvy people apply for jobs.

Therefore, you — an up-and-coming hot-shot in your career field — need to be careful about what you’re posting online. It’s not just whether your friend will see you drunk and know you had a good time the night before, but what matters is that your current/future boss will see it and decide you’re an idiotic risk to the company.

You’re not in high school anymore and there’s no excuse for the complete ignorance to what the real world is like. The boss isn’t going to care that they have a scandalous photo just like yours from when they were in university, or that it was your cousin’s last night in town. What potential employers are seeing is someone who has no respect for themselves or what image they’re projecting.

The importance of image in business may sound frustrating and you may really hate the politics of it, but the fact is that’s the way the world works, and so it should, in fact. Nobody wants to work with someone who doesn’t look like they care about themselves. They want to have faith in their professional counterpart and that means looking professional and trustworthy.

Consider the numerous recent scandals of celebrity sex videos for example. Now granted you most likely haven’t posted sex videos of yourself on the net, but posting half-naked, sexually explicit or illegal photos is just as bad. Thinking that no one but your small and selected group of friends will see your webpage, and will safeguard your reputation, is a naïve and ignorant way of thinking. All it would take would be one “friend” to download the image and upload it to the World Wide Web, and then a simple Google search will be all it takes to see you double-fisting Kokanee or licking the nipple of some random hobo.

In this day and age, the revelation of a new celebrity sex video does little more than garner a tired gasp, but that doesn’t excuse your disregard for what goes up as your profile picture.

The actors in question appearing in sex tapes are still working, sure, but for what? They’re never going to go anywhere because people know that they’re careless and have no respect for themselves as to be cautious of what’s happening to their naked body.

The point is that you need to be responsible for what you’re posting on the web. Poor discretion and incriminating photos can affect how people think of you now or in the future, because photos on the web aren’t as easy to delete as the Polaroids in your shoebox. You may be in the careless phase of life now, but you won’t always and one day you’ll grow up. That’s not to say that you can’t photograph the fun times and keep those photos for your personal collection, but be affirmative about what’s being posted; delete the tag on the image or ask the person to take it down. Above all remember that it’s the Internet is the new public information centre and everything you post is public information no matter what you do.

Chelse McKee is the Arts and Entertainment Editor of the Manitoban.