When I'm an interviewer, I of course look up the person I'm about to interview on the 'net. I have yet to stumble across someone who has put up something racy or racist or something so outright offensive that I couldn't imagine hiring them. I can only hope that such a person would fail our initial screening. But as online sites like MySpace and Facebook and Friendster allows people to indulge more and more in transcribing their transgressions in life, you've got to expect there's a backlash looming. And one of these days, I'm going to be surprised.

Case in point:

Facebook, Myspace, etc. And Getting Hired - a snippet:

But, during the interview, something he was not prepared for happened. The interviewer began asking specific questions about the content on his Facebook.com listing and the situation became very awkward and uncomfortable. The son had thought only those he allowed to access his profile would be able to do so. But, the interviewer explained that as a state agency, recruiters accessed his Facebook account under the auspices of the Patriot Act.

Sometime soon, high-school and college students are going to realize that you have to build your professional, easy to find, upstanding public net presence that you control and shape and, off to the side, keep a relatively anonymous indulgence not directly associated with you but rather a persona that gives you plausible deniability. Sure your friends know who it is. And that's good enough. They'll have to be split. Anything else is just mud spelled backwards.