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I hope you all saw the article last week about the New England Patriot cheerleader who posted pics of herself using a marker on a passed out friend on her Facebook.

http://www.faniq.com/blog/Caitlin-Davis-Former-New-England-Patriots-Chee...

The pictures included her and her friends drawing swastikas, male anatomy and comments like "I am a Jew" on the person. The Patriots were quickly made aware of these postings and she was fired. The pictures were posted on dozens of websites.

Even if she takes the pics off her Facebook, any recruiter etc who googles her will find this story and the pics.

jhack's picture

Let's not forget that the best way to avoid such embarrassment is to act responsibly. Even if you don't post "those pictures" on Facebook, someone else might.

John

TomW's picture
Training Badge

To continue John's idea... before you think you can control what your friends post, remember that almost everyone has a camera in their cell phone. Someone you never knew, met, or saw in your life could post a picture or video of you doing something really dumb.

ashdenver's picture

Here's another article along the same vein ... http://tech.msn.com/products/articlepcw.aspx?cp-documentid=10361726

Some of them were pretty boneheaded, though I'm starting to think that "people in education" might need to smarten up a bit.

thaGUma's picture

I think Facebook is great - wonderful to have a tool that encourages the clueless to identify themselves before we waste time interviewing them.

US41's picture

I don't think even a bad facebook page tells you very much about a person applying for a job. I would never bother going to look at one or googling anyone I interviewed or that works for me.

I also think it ignores the human tendency to completely recycle oneself. Pictures of me from five years ago on the job and a picture of me today are like night and day. It is this belief in the ability of humans to change their behavior that drives manager tools. If someone was a college punk three years ago, that should not doom them. People do change their behavior dramatically if not their core personality.

Yes, keep your facebook page clean because as an employee it will be held against you. As a manager - don't look at them if you can't handle seeing people let their hair down and having fun.

Norwood's picture

Also relevant to this thread is a recent article from Information Week magazine, talking about the challenges companies are facing with employees accessing social networking sites...

An interesting story they mention:
"A year or so ago, one of the big IT services firms fired a bunch of entry-level consultants for an indiscretion - evidently they weren't aware that posting their frat-party photos online for all to see could reflect poorly on their employer".

Check the full article, "Down To Business: Consumer Technology And The IT Democracy", here:
http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal_tech/showArticle.jhtml?arti...

:)