Will Getting Too Personal Online Today Spoil Your Job Chances Tomorrow?

"The future belongs to the uninhibited."

So says a recent article in New York magazine about the relative ease -- and often carefree nature -- with which today’s 30-and-under crowd publishes personal information online.

Posting drunken photos from that spring break trip to Cancun? Writing a blog post or MySpace comment that blasts a colleague or supervisor? Neither takes much more than a couple of clicks or keystrokes to do. Yes, thanks to Web 2.0 personal online publishing tools -- blogs, wikis and social-networking sites -- we can share our thoughts and experiences with the world in an instant.

But thanks to the caching power of search engines, what we publish today will remain online tomorrow, next month, next year and five years from now. And savvy employers are very likely to take a look at your personal online record before they hire you.

Christopher Penn certainly does. He’s a hiring manager and chief technology officer at the Student Loan Network and says that Googling job candidates’ names before bringing them in for a face-to-face interview is a no-brainer. “We also search their email address on MySpace, LinkedIn and Facebook,” Penn says.

Blogging about your passions, interests and hobbies could be an asset to your candidacy, Penn says -- provided your musings don’t include blatant hate speech or references/photos featuring you participating in illegal activities.

The bottom line? Responsibly managing your online identity means understanding that whatever you publish about yourself today could one day be reviewed and used in a decision about whether to hire you. Viewed through that lens, just how uninhibited are you prepared to be?

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