True or false: Universities check out your facebook

I didn't say a complete idiot, did I? Say a Facebook status said something like 'Got drunk last night and had the best time ever!", that doesn't necessarily mean you're an alchohlic delinquent drop-out who would never be able to hold down a job. At university, some of the cleverest and most hard-working people I know still manage to have a good time.

If you're only doing things which are by all accounts reasonable and not embarassing, surely you'd have nothing to fear then would you?

So it would make no sense to complain about it.

This reminds me of the "you've got nothing to fear if you've got nothing to hide" pro-CCTV argument from people who just don't get the point.

Entirely different. If you don't want people to look at your facebook, private it.

You can't exactly walk down a street with a bed sheet over you to disguise your identity.

Our lecturer gave us a warning story about a guy who landed a City TC and got fired in the first week for posting something about work, even though they're profile was as private as possible.

As she put it: The only people who care you had a **** day at work are in your phonebook; So for ****'s sake text them because any industry you work in is a lot smaller world than you think.

Nothing will ever beat Legal Alien's story though

Entirely different. If you don't want people to look at your facebook, private it.

You can't exactly walk down a street with a bed sheet over you to disguise your identity.

I've heard that Universities check out your facebook and other social networking sites, sometimes during the UCAS application cycle and sometimes once you're in

Is this true? Apparently they watch threads on TSR as well

I haven't heard that story - do tell?

LA secures TC at US firm. Spends the two years prior to starting Roffing about various unsavoury matters and slating his future firm. Firm are not stupid and work out that LA is one of their future trainees. Firm are furious. Firm wait til summer party. Firm hire magician and the culmination of the trick, in short, is that LA is presented with a card with his Rof username on. Rather than playing it cool, LA goes white and disappears sharpish, confirming to the firm that LA is who they thought he was.

LA called in for a meeting, LA apologies, firm rescind his TC

Plenty of people forget or just don't really consider the need to put their Facebook privacy to "friends only". That shouldn't be considered an invitation for anyone in the world to go looking through everything on their page and judging their ability to do a job from it.

Can you imagine receiving a notice saying you can't have your dream job because "we looked your name up on Facebook and, after looking through your tagged photos, saw a picture of you being sick in a bush - this is not the sort of image we would like associated with our company"? There's no need for it, everyone slips up from time to time and it's not right to expect people to be constantly policing their Facebook on the off-chance there's something they wouldn't want their employer to see on there.

It's pretty legendary, sorry kind of assumed you'd lurk on RoF now you're at the TC stage (I think?).

Anyway:

Ah, I see. No, I've just started my second year, so not quite doing a TC yet! I'm familiar with RoF but hadn't seen that story before.

I have no problem whatsoever with any of that.

If an employer wants to screen their applicants on the basis of their behaviour on or off the job, it's fine by me - especially as a few little clicks can prevent it - or, dare I say, behaving sensibly in the first place when you're in public.

If you can't be bothered to do either, you're asking for trouble.

As for TSR, it certainly would be easy for them to track you down via Stalking Pages