Colleen Seeker is a sophomore at the Carlson School of Management, who's a few years away from job-seeking in the real world. And, at the moment, she isn't too worried about what potential employers might learn about her online. "If it's going to happen, it's going to happen, oh well."
And she's not alone. Morgan Kinross-Wright is a career counselor at Carlson School of Management. "A lot of students were surprised that recruiters might look them up on Facebook."
"Facebook" is a social networking site like "MySpace," but is geared specifically toward college students. Millions of them have their own "Facebook" profile that can reveal everything from the admirable to the mundane.
Karen Lange is the Dean of Students at the University of St. Thomas. "The caution I have is around putting too much personal information out there; their cell phone numbers or pictures or inappropriate pictures that might come back to haunt them later in life."
Concern is growing, because more and more college recruiters and employers are not only doing criminal background checks on applicants, they're doing online "character checks." They're getting all the information they need, and then some, oftentimes, straight from the horses mouth.
Kinross-Wright, "We're not hearing about it from recruiters, but from students who've said, yeah, my recruiter said that they 'Facebooked' me."
The best protection here is common sense; using the site's privacy controls so profiles aren't open to everyone and keeping the mundane to a minimum.
Ben Nebo, a St. Thomas sophomore, has the most obvious, and perhaps, best advice. He says, "If you don't want your mom to see it, don't put it on."
By Amy Hockert, KARE 11 News
(Copyright 2006 by KARE. All Rights Reserved.)
