ce to document our whole lives on Facebook: the good, the bad and the downright drunken. From holiday snaps and nights at Why Not to mooning at Angkor Watt on your Gap year, your Facebook profile is likely to be a scrapbook of the recent years of your life. But what happens when a potential employer logs on to scrutinise your photos, groups and comments? Is it a fair way to evaluate you as a job candidate?

Whether fair or not, a staggering 53 per cent of employers admitted to using social networking sites to research applicants, according to a recent survey by PC Advisor. Perhaps even more alarmingly, two out of five employers said they had found content on a social network that dissuaded them from hiring a candidate. Craig Wilson, Edinburgh University graduate and current job-hunter, altered his Facebook name to prevent future employers from "reading all my nuanced and subtle dick jokes. While I trust my friends to discern between my self-depreciating jokes and reality, I can’t be sure that global companies with years of executive knowledge and experience are smart enough to get the joke." He believes that, "Employers have every right to do a background check before investing in us but it’s up to us to make sure that they only find what we want them to find."The majority of the students I spoke to thought it was morally reprehensible that an employer would consider Facebook a reliable snapshot of their character. "It’s a total invasion of privacy" said a 4th year English Literature student, "Why is it their business what I do in my free time, so long as I show up on time and work hard?"

Those who object to the use of Facebook as an addition to their CV do so on the grounds of privacy. Considering the steps one can take to protect your profile or Twitter account from prying eyes, it is carelessness that leads to this information being viewed publicly. Nick Spray who works for the Ministry of Justice uses a pseudonym for his Facebook account, and why? "Purely because I work in security and Facebook doesn’t really set a good example. People in my profession generally discourage using it because it is famous for its security problems. In addition, people can target you and learn personal information about you; especially Facebook Places that lets people see exactly where are you and what you’re doing. I want to hide my Facebook profile from both prospective employers and current colleagues and suppliers because I really don’t want my professional contacts to see photos of me drunk". Perhaps Mr Spray has taken steps enough to shield him from professional embarrassment, but many would argue that it is remiss to keep that information anywhere in the public domain, considering the tiny degree of separation between any two people in the cyber-world.

Interestingly, the head of Human Resources at a London Public Relations company, when asked if her office used Facebook to investigate job applicants replied, "No we don’t! It’s not a fair or valid selection method." I was surprised at her adamant attitude towards this practice, especially considering that many of their employees use their social networks to promote clients. Surely a clean digital legacy is an important quality in an employee? More important, it seems, is that the right person be chosen for the position, regardless of their social networking activities.

In Germany, the condemnation of this hiring practice is so strong, that the German government are considering legislation making it illegal to use social networks in the recruitment process. German interior minister, Thomas de Maiziére, was quoted on personneltoday.com as saying, "Private social networks are private social networks and not gateways to gaining information on job applicants." Where Mr. Maiziére’s logic is dubious is in the question of whether or not a Facebook photo ought to be deemed ‘private’. If someone has allowed a photograph, or comment, to remain on Facebook, or on any site, which is a public domain, should we not be held responsible for the consequences of it being viewed?

One comforting factor in the ongoing debate on social networking and its relevance to real life, is that, online we are all held to the same standard of scrutiny. In recent new stories, 16-year-old Chelsea Taylor was fired over Facebook from her job at the Lancashire Tea Room, and why? Because she had posted a status update complaining about the mundane nature of her job. While in Philadelphia, a college professor was discovered making disparaging remarks about her pupils. "It’s a two-way street," said Shelagh Green from the Edinburgh University Careers Services. Both employer and employee can turn to the Internet for information. A good online reputation is just as important to a company looking to recruit as it is to those being recruited, "the challenge is how easy it is to validate the quality of that information." At every stage in online research, one has to ask oneself, how reliable is the information I’m gleaning from Google?

Though there is a focus on Facebook as a social networking minefield, other sites, such as Twitter, and even LinkedIn, are equally fraught with ‘e-peril’. Even when you have made it through the hiring process, your social networking activity can still land you in trouble. Whether a Tweet is as simple as complaining about a boring day at the office, or as offensive as a racist or sexist slur, one should always follow the adage: "Pause before you Tweet is the new ‘think before you speak’".

Pausing before posting is absolutely essential at all times, because, as Stuart MacLennan discovered during the General Election, even tweets that were posted before you were ‘somebody’ can quickly make you a ‘nobody’. MacLennan, an Edinburgh University graduate who was deemed "a rising star of the Scottish Labour Party" by The Times, found out the hard way when he was fired over offensive tweets he had written before he became a Labour candidate. Harry Cole, an Edinburgh graduate, Torybear.com blogger and prolific tweet-er, defended Stuart on BBC News, saying, "He needed to take a long hard look at what he was posting online. As a MSP candidate, it is unacceptable. He had to go."

Cole went on to say of social networking activities, "Anything that you wouldn’t want plastered across the nation’s media or put on a billboard on the side of the House of Commons, you shouldn’t put online. It’s like shouting out at the top of your voice, someone’s going to overhear you, someone’s going to see it. People always forget that the internet lasts forever." It is not only relevant in politics, but in any industry where reputation is paramount, an employee is a representative of their employer at all times, and once a comment has been made it anywhere online, the toothpaste is out of the tube. If a posting is objectionable, everything thereafter is crisis management.

For all of the hiring and firing that have occurred due to adverse online activity, there is one important point to be made, and that is, instead of being a liability, your social networking activities can be harnessed to work enormously in your favour. Being shrewd about what you post online can be the difference between being hired and being passed over. Untagging the photograph of you naked as the day you were born and so drunk you can’t keep your eyes open is just good sense, but replacing it with a photograph of your summer working in a soup kitchen is shrewd ‘online reputation management’. ORM is a growing industry in itself, as companies begin to offer courses in making your online activity benefit you, instead of working against you. Our own Career Services is running a workshop entitled ‘Social Networking and Digital Identity’ on the 23rd of November 2010. If you’re at all ambitious and hoping for a job in the future, but also have a Facebook page littered with drunk-and-naked photos and a Twitter page covered with expletive-filled tweets, it is recommended that you seek help from somewhere.

From the point of view of handling your own public relations, it is common sense to have a well-managed online reputation. The number of news stories breaking due to badly handled social networking behaviour is too obvious a cautionary tale to be ignored. Whether you think it’s right that employers should Google you or not, they are exploring the avenues of information available to them. It is nonsensical to act as though checking someone’s Facebook profile is the e-quivalent of riffling through their underwear draw, or reading their journal. It is foolish to feel indignant at what is made available to view: you have allowed that information to appear online and you are responsible for the consequences. A healthy approach, as put forward by a 4th year Arabic student is this: "I never post anything that would be offensive to my mother, my grandmother or my boss." Of course, it seems like just good sense, but we all know how easy it is to embarrass ourselves in the era of instantaneous communication. Whether it’s a drunken text to an ex, or a particularly offensive tweet about Chelsea beating Man U, taking a moment before pressing send is what stands between you and potential disaster.