Busted

Since I'm on the unofficial USC finance recruiting team, I've been getting a lot of resumes. The problem with getting 38 resumes at once and having to choose interview candidates is that most resumes, especially undergraduate ones, are poorly written and don't tell you much (I got a resume that had "sending faxes" as a job description). One of the things I've been doing is googling the resumes to find out more info. Sometimes that leads to class projects online or dean's lists and most times I get no hits, but other times it leads to Xanga or Blogspot sites. Well, one of my searches (and subsequent browsing) led me to a candidate's ex-boyfriend's Xanga site and he was able to track me down (I deleted his comment in the previous post because it had her name).

The main question is what to do with any information, either good or bad, you find on the Internet. I know you're not supposed to ask questions like age, marital status, religion, and other stuff during an interview but the candidate can offer the info themselves. One of our MBA interns this summer put on her resume that she was the starring actress in a Bollywood movie; of course I had to check that out. However, most people are not expecting future (or even current) employers to read their personal blog even though it's a public forum.

I guess the lesson is that you're not as private/anonymous as you think you are online. I'll need to remember to shut down this site (and my old Xanga account) if I start looking for another job, although there is a famous architect with the same name and he gets all the hits. :)