Can your online past come back to haunt you?

When it comes to some aspects of finding a job by social networking, such as online reputation management, Sean Ryan, senior vice president of engineering and a hiring manager at online measurement tools vendor Lyris, Inc., has a completely opposite view than most. The vast majority of recruiting professionals say it's important to make sure there's nothing online that could be too personal or embarrassing or that might turn off potential employers doing a background check.

"I think that's just popular nonsense," he said. "If you're a good engineer ... and you've got a good resume and we check out your profile on LinkedIn and your last employer said good things about you, I don't care if you binge drink on weekends. I really don't. What I need to know is whether you're capable of doing the job.

"I've forgotten 80% of what I did in college and the 20% I remember was probably completely inappropriate," Ryan continued. "People made a big deal about Clinton admitting he smoked pot in college. Well, for goodness sakes, lots of people did and it didn't make them less capable of doing their jobs."

Ryan said he does not recommend hiring managers or HR professionals go to "what was intended by the candidate to be a social site for friends to determine if they're good candidate." So skip Facebook and instead check out Plaxo, for instance, a professional social networking site used by the younger crowd along the lines of LinkedIn.

But Chandlee Bryan, a career coach in New York, takes the more conventional approach -- meaning she does check all sites -- a position that's backed up by recent research she has conducted on job seekers using LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

Bryan said, "My first finding is that the baseline of any successful job search now is online reputation management: i.e., knowing what information is floating in the cybersphere attached to your name."

Specific to Facebook, which is the subject of most of the discussion about online embarrassments, Bryan had this to say: "Recruiters generally don't search Facebook for candidates, but may review your profile to screen you out" -- for example, scout for signs of excess drinking, drugs and other potential problems.

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