Hey College Seniors — Your Bender is Showing and No One Wants to Hire You
Despite the fact that some college tuitions have reached an excess of $50,000 per year, these days colleges can't guarantee that their graduates will have jobs waiting for them. In the wake of this uncertainty, some institutions have begun to guide their students in cleaning up their social media profiles, to lower the risk of a poorly-timed facebook post ruining their shot at employment.
Universities such as Syracuse, Rochester and Johns Hopkins are now offering services that scrub the online profile of graduating seniors to prepare them for the job application process. While many of these students are entering the workforce for the first time, it's not just the students who are sloppily clutching the end of a beer bong in all their Facebook photos who are at risk -- mistaken identities can also cost you your shot at your dream job.
Some graduating seniors with common names have found themselves linked to all sorts of anti-social behaviors that they never even got the benefit of participating in. The universities work with these unluckily named job-seekers to figure out ways to ensure that potential employers see the real them when they Google search their name.
According to a recent survey, over 40 percent of companies search social media before making a hire.
"The first item on our 'five things to do before you graduate' list is 'clean up your online profile,'" said Lisa Severy, president-elect of the National Career Development Association. "We call it the grandma test — if you don't want her to see it, you probably don't want an employer to, either."
We're guessing Lisa has never seen our newly-divorced grandma's uncomfortably raunchy facebook profile, or she'd know better than to use that analogy.