Time to Clean Up Your ONLINE Profile

For those of you who are about to graduate, those seeking employment and even those of you beginning the process of applying to other colleges to continue your education, review and clean up your online profile.  More importantly, begin thinking about what you post, photos, comments, status updates.  Employers in areas far less security conscious than those we prepare you for will do background checks and comb through your online existence.  Our career fields most certainly do this and you won't appreciate having an opportunity evaporate because you had half naked drunk pictures of yourself from the "best night ever" posted on Facebook or you posted your play by play status update of some vandalism spree you and your friends went on one Saturday nights.  I was on the other end of a phone call when a very good job offer to a post-degree program Paralegal student was rescinded because she was apparently a picture posting party girl.  I also had the displeasure of receiving a call from the Chief of a local police department when the person who had been a model student and tested well enough to be first on that department's list of applicants was to be eliminated from consideration because he was tagged in a video one of his buddies posted after a night of petty vandalism, drinking in a vehicle and references to "smoking weed".

Cameras are everywhere, things you post on the web travel at the speed of light and become known by more people than you might ever imagine.  Think about what your career objectives are, what you say or do and especially what you say or do online.  If you wouldn't say it or do it in front of your Grandmother, don't say or do it online.   If it's illegal for you to do, don't do it.  Show character, maturity and most important, some forethought and common sense.

Thankfully there was no Internet, Facebook or Youtube to record and memorialize the transgressions of my and my buddies youth.  But those things exist for you and that information can follow you for a long time.  Act accordingly and most important, review and clean up your profile where needed.
-Professor Higgins