High school or college students used to dominate the social networking scene, but recently, sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter have been attracting users of all ages to join the phenomenon and share their life online. But no matter how old you are, you might want to be careful what you put on your profile.

Hiring managers aren’t just relying on written references anymore to judge if a candidate is right for a job. Many employers are signing in to these sites to research potential and current employees, looking at everything from photos to what you’re writing to your friends. If you have inappropriate pictures of yourself from Jimmy’s toga party or offensive language in your “About me” section, you might have to kiss that job you’ve been dying to land goodbye.

We’re not telling you to totally revamp your account and only post pictures of yourself frolicking with puppies and volunteering at soup kitchens. But you should ask yourself this question: Would I be cool with my grandma seeing everything on my profile? If the answer is no—or you just have a wild and crazy grandma—you might want to clean things up a bit in case an employer takes a peek.

And if it’s totally not your fault that objectionable material popped up on your page (i.e. your friend Willy left profanity on your wall) just make sure you delete it as soon as you see it. MySpace and other websites have a tool that allows users to preview anything that goes on their page before it’s published, including comments and photos.

• Start your job search now, and check out seasonal jobs, too.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 29th, 2008 at 6:58 am and is filed under Jobs, Work, Careers, Tech talk, Workplace manners. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.