this picture is all over the internet, but this person has nothing to do with the story
I recently wrote an article on the importance (or not?) of a University education when it comes to finding the best jobs. I highly recommend you read it after reading this.
Did you ever imagine 15 years ago that so much of your life would be shared online, without barriers, to anyone in the world? It's amazing how far we've come, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, and Blogging have really changed the way we interact with one another.
Is there any point of going to the high school reunion anymore? Probably not :) Especially if you're a pathological liar, it's not hard to find out who you really are just by searching your name in Google. Try it sometime... It's pretty amazing - somewhat shocking to some.
Well high school reunions aside, there is a much darker side to this - and perhaps a side that most people never came to expect. I was chatting with a friend from one of the largest video game publisher in the world. He was trying to hire a new PR manager for a very popular title - a lucrative highly desirable position no doubt.
They interviewed six candidates after sifting through 500 or so resumes. The person who landed at the top was a girl from Texas who by all accounts was an incredible candidate. We'll call her Jane for now.
Jane is fun, smart, aggressive, charismatic, and well researched. Her resume is a bit weak because she had just come out of school - but she really knew what to say to impress the team. Jane came into the room with guns blazing and presented a proposal right off the bat - which is pretty cool, and probably the right thing to do in order to differentiate yourself from the crowd. You would never guess that she had just graduated from PR school, she looked like a pro.
When Jane left the interview she left with a shoe in the door.
Over the weekend I went to dinner with my friend - he asked me for my personal recommendation for anyone else I might know of just to be sure. I of course named some names of some of the best PR people I know - but then we got to talking about the girl he interviewed - and based on her thin resume I recommended that he do some searches online first.
Well, low and behold he found a Myspace page with this girl's picture all over it. He also found her blog, which is quite a shocking read if you ask me. Her Facebook profile is wide open for anyone to read - lots of friends too, somewhere around 800.
Not only does Jane like coming up with great media proposals and doing well in job interviews - but she also likes drinking, smoking stuff, and partying, a lot.
She has many pictures "lips puckered" which are cute, but then it gets interesting. She wears white cotton underwear and she loves to show it off. Apparently when she drinks too much she winds up falling asleep in random places and waking up not knowing where she is. A few weeks prior to the interview Jane woke up in a bathtub covered in vomit. Charming.
Her favorite quotes have four letter words in them, and oh, and did I mention there's a picture of her passed out with a moustache drawn on her once pretty face while her boy friends are behind her wagging their tongues and flashing the rock on sign?
Poor Jane... Unfortunately for her, employers have to be extra careful who they hire these days. ..and even though the odd celebration may be perfectly acceptable, such red flags for someone who would be in the public eye could turn any employer off. You could just see the HR nightmare about to ensue and no one wants to get caught in that.
It turns out that there are more pictures that paint Jane in a positive light - but as everyone knows, if you get tagged your pictures that other people take are also shared. It's unfortunate, really, because she really had a chance at this job - and fresh out of PR school she would have landed a highly sought after position.
Anyways, the morale of this article is careful what you do online - and more importantly don't be an idiot. ...because no matter what there's no way to avoid who you actually are on the Internet. If you want a real career the good jobs are already gone. You have to differentiate yourself and act responsibly.
Good luck, and do share your thoughts and stories please. By the way, if you want to freak yourself out check out pipl.com (thanks @anitaloomba).
