As reports of people losing jobs because of social media websites surface, having a clean social networking profile is becoming increasingly important. Socioclean.com provides clients with the tools necessary to protect your reputation. | Mary Baak/The Daily Cougar
In the age of technology, social networking has long been a source of entertainment and, of course, distraction — especially for college students.
With all the photos, wall posts and tweets posted on different websites, it’s easy for inappropriate material to show up on students’ profiles. Where people go wrong is in thinking that only their friends can view the content they post.
Now more than ever, employers have started looking through applicants’ profiles, which has cost a few qualified candidates jobs.
What some mistake as a harmless photo or comment can actually hurt a person’s reputation as a responsible, well-rounded employee. For this reason, Priyanshu Harshavat and UH alumnus Hassan Gurshi founded socioclean.com in October of last year.
This website is geared toward college students who are close to graduating and beginning the after-graduation job search.
The service allows users to scan their profiles for 5,000 pre-defined words that could be considered inappropriate or even incriminating to onlookers.
“It doesn’t matter how tight your security settings are,” co-founder Hassan Gurshi said. “No one wants to admit it, but Facebook stalking is probably the No. 1 activity in the world.”
What sets socioclean.com apart from other services is that it is self-governing and completely free. It scans through your profile and provides links to inappropriate words, but it is entirely up to the user to delete the content. Users are also allowed to adjust words on the list, which provides real-time results.
After the search is complete, it shows the user a detailed report of all the material that has the potential to ruin your social reputation — complete with pie charts and graphs that show you different catagories of offensive data.
Before you start your job search, it would behoove you to make sure your social networking sites won’t give you a bad reputation.
“Facebook and other social networking websites are often the first impression,” Gurshi said. “In some cases, they can also be the last.”
that is an intriguing idea. BTW, how are recruiters able to see my information? Is this something that UH does?