Drawing the Curtain on Online Nakedness
I'm in Phoenix for a couple of days, meeting with my Paraglyph confreres and giving a short presentation on POD publishing to the Arizona Book Publishing Association. After dinner last night I was catching up on my aggregators, and found a short article that nails precisely why young people should not assume that nobody cares now-or will ever care-what sort of image they present online.
Employers care. They care a lot. They've been forced to, by litigation that holds them responsible for staff misconduct. When a staffer turns violent or becomes abusive in some other way, the legal system asks, Well, didn't you check them out before you hired them?
So prospective employers are doing ever-deeper background checks of applicants, and modern search-engine technology is casting a much wider net without a great deal of additional cost or effort. With the downside (bankrupting lawsuits) so serious, an employer will go to a fair amount of effort to see "what's out there." Apart from the obvious (arrest record, verification of vita credentials like degrees) employers have an interest in a lot of other things:
- Smoking. Few young people seem to have any idea that a lot of employers, especially in small business, simply will not hire smokers. (Other staffers will likely complain that "Chuck stinks," but firing Chuck because he stinks will just invite a lawsuit.) Managers may not be able to ask straight-out, "Are you a smoker?" but suppose they read on your blog: "After dinner last night I was desperate for a smoke, but Marty was out and I had to settle for whatever crap they had at 7-11..." Pass.
- Drinking. Staffers who drink heavily lose a lot of work days, and if they do some damage while DUI on a business trip, the company may be held responsible. Again, what does it say on your blog? "Goddam, that was a party! I beat my old record for passing out..." Pass. (heh.)
- Sexual braggadoccio. I'm not sure anybody understands how completely twitchy the workplace has gotten about sex. Sexual harrassment lawsuits have gone over the horizon into absurdity, and even when the courts toss out the suit, the time and money lost in the process are never recovered. Guys who post explicit comments on unidentifiable women (Geez! What a rack Laurie's got!) sound like risks. Guys who talk about deep flirting or sleeping with coworkers light up in brilliant red. It's not just the guys, either: Women who talk about dressing provocatively or brag about eliciting a response in the guys at the office will be seen as disruptive influences.
- Drugs. Admitting that you smoke dope or do meth or worse-sheesh, this is going to inspire confidence in an employer?
- Combativeness. Rudeness, insults, and other miscellaneous flaming online suggest that the poster may be difficult to work with. A lot of people seem to think (somewhat oddly) that they have a pass when flaming about politics (as opposed to making personal attacks on their online peers) but what you're being combative about really doesn't matter. Most managers see anger as a serious personality flaw. And besides, a small business owner struggling with tax issues or government red tape may see your lefty rants and think, "Oh yeah. His kind are the reason I'm having this problem." Pass.
- Lawsuits. Having filed a lawsuit against a former employer (or even talking about your willingness to do so) tags you as a serious risk, especially to small businesses, for whom a lawsuit could be fatal.
You can argue that some of this may not be fair, but it's real-we are in the midst of what may be a permanent labor surplus, and there's likely to be a big pile of other resumes on the hiring manager's desk, some of them from people better than you are. Why ruin your chances? Especially when stuff posted on the Net is forever, and the tools for searching will only become better over time. We may someday have software that can match faces online, so that anonymously posted photo of yourself dancing drunk on a table may not always be as anonymous as you think. The fact that the photo is fifteen years old may not matter. Nor does the possibility that some of these things may be construed in some places as illegal discrimination. You will never know why your resume got round-filed. They just won't call you back.
So I'll draw the curtain on this online nakedness thread by suggesting that you never post anything online that you wouldn't want your current boss (and all prospective bosses) to read. The future belongs to those who craft their online presence carefully. The future may belong, in fact, to those who simply know how to keep their online mouths shut.