Drawing a Line between Personal and Professional Lives

There is too much information available out there, it is overwhelming! Some of that information is private. We upload it to share it with friends and family, to remember good and fun times. However, it seems that privacy is no longer there. Everyone has access to information that should not concern them.

I find it upsetting to see that people are granted or denied jobs based on their pictures and profiles in facebook or myspace. I think that a line should be drawn between professional and personal lives. As long as a person is able to behave professionally in their jobs, what they do in their spare time or the past should not concern employers.

It is unbelievable that the past can haunt you for so long. A position should not be denied to a person because of their personal lives. A beer or a frat party should not determine whether I am capable of performing a job or not. Basing a decision on a profile could lead the employer to overlook more important details that affect the performance in the job more directly. It could lead to a company losing an extremely valuable person because of their past or private lives.

Therefore, I believe that it should be illegal to look up your personal information online. However, I find that more difficult to control, so we should at least clean up our profiles and even if there are bad things posted online, we should make sure that there are more positive things to counter balance it.

I believe that these new emerging companies who manage profiles are going to be very profitable in the future. We don’t have the time to find our negative information and I believe that we aren’t even sure of how to begin looking for it.