Social Intellegence is an Oxymoron

The New York Times recently published an article discussing how companies are using social media background checks as part of their hiring process.

Now, we've hard about this before.  In the good old days, it was enough to adjust your security settings and untag a few pictures.  Not today.  Searches include Craigslist, photo sharing sites, and many other places that we either don't think about or don't realize are publicly searchable.  Consider the following from Twitpic:

Information You Post

When you post a pic through Twitpic, information about you, including user profile information, may be visible to other users. If you post personal information online that is accessible to the public, that information becomes publicly available and can be collected and used by others and redistributed through the internet and other media channels. You may receive unsolicited messages from other parties in return. 

Photo Credit: FUGLY.com

This means that those pictures you put up on your Twitter feed during spring break last year could come back to bite you when you apply to that dream job years in the future.  Social media checks are here to stay.

One way to protect yourself is to never post anything that could be embarrassing.  The best way is to just not do anything that could be embarrassing.