Yes, potential employers can, and often do, run your name through Google, as well as social-networking sites, to see what comes up. A CNN article states that twenty-two percent of potential employers check out candidates this way. I don't know about any of you, but that's a fairly-large percentage to me. I certainly wouldn't want to take the risk!

I'm not in charge of hiring anyone at the moment. If I were, I would run a Google search for every potential employee, including "lower-level" workers. Why? Because I don't want to inadvertently hire some jerk who lists his hobbies as "Urinating in fry vats." And I certainly don't want to hire someone who publicly states via social-networking sites that he or she was canned from the last gig for doing something nasty, or illegal.

And yes - people really do share that sort of "personal information" on their pages.

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