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AfterCollege Survey Reveals Nearly 50% of Employers Feel Information Posted on Social Networking Sites Should Be Considered When Making Hiring Decisions

Posted on: Tuesday, 28 November 2006, 12:00 CST

A recent survey of more than 750 employers and college students conducted by AfterCollege, Inc. (www.aftercollege.com), the nation's largest career network specializing in recruitment at the college level, reveals that nearly 50% of employers feel that information posted on social networking sites should be taken into consideration when making hiring decisions. While 30% of students agree, 26% remain undecided.

Nearly 40% of employers conduct web searches to gain insight about prospective new hires, and 37% said that if they discovered something questionable about a prospective new hire they would not offer them the job. Interestingly, nearly 50% would still offer them the job, but would "keep an eye on them."

Other noteworthy results of the survey include:

 --  Of the employers who investigate potential new hires, most look to     MySpace first for information and then to FaceBook second. However, of the     80% of students who do post on social networking sites, the majority post     on FaceBook first and then MySpace.      --  Over 25% of students who post on social networking sites have posted     questionable information or pictures.      --  In light of the current employment issues surrounding social     networking sites, nearly 32% of students have stopped posting information     that they would otherwise post.      --  Of those employers who do investigate potential new hires, nearly 40%     draw the line at hard drug activity such as cocaine, methamphetamines and     heroin and would not extend a job offer if it was discovered that a     potential new hire was engaging in this type of drug activity.  However,     only 3.3% of employers draw the line at nudity, while 4.1% and 14.7% draw     the line at heavy drinking and smoking marijuana respectively.      --  Nearly 75% of the students surveyed have a GPA between 3.1 and 4.0,     with 30% of them saying that they party two to four times a month.  Nearly     45% of these students say their partying consists of mostly drinking (more     than two glasses of beer), while over 50% of these same students say     partying for them is simply going out with friends and having fun.      

"It's interesting that nearly 40% of employers conduct web searches before extending job offers, while only 12.5% say they have investigated potential hires on social networking sites," said Roberto Angulo, CEO of AfterCollege. "This may be attributed to the difficulty involved in accessing information on social networking sites, as opposed to simply looking someone up on a search engine. The effort involved in accessing some of these sites is quite time-consuming because most require an invitation to join a specific group. Since nearly 50% of employers said that information posted on social networking sites should be taken into consideration when extending a job offer, it tends to reason that if given easy access, they would conduct a much more thorough investigation within these sites prior to extending job offers."

About AfterCollege

Founded in 1999, AfterCollege, Inc. (www.aftercollege.com) is the nation's largest career network specializing in recruitment at the college and alumni level. AfterCollege provides employers with direct access to students through an exclusive network of over 1,300 academic departments and student groups as well as a proprietary database of more than 17,750 faculty and student group contacts at the nation's top universities. AfterCollege, Inc. is based in San Francisco, California.

AfterCollege and related logos are registered trademarks of AfterCollege, Inc.

 Media Contact:  Michelle Corbett 650.722.2673 Contact via http://www.marketwire.com/mw/emailprcntct?id=82175AF86DF8D68D  

SOURCE: AfterCollege, Inc.

Source: MARKET WIRE

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