Big Brother is watching -- or at least that's what some undergraduate business students are starting to think. Last December, Eric Elias, a senior at the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis took down anything on his Facebook profile that could remotely be seen as unprofessional because he was seeking internships.
One of his friends is deactivating his account altogether while he searches for his first postgraduation job, says Elias. Austin Hollo, also a senior at Olin, says he's conscious of anything he puts into the online sphere -- even e-mail, which, of course, can be forwarded to anyone.
Are these just cases of extreme paranoia? Not exactly. Recent reports and anecdotal evidence show that corporate recruiters are Googling potential employees, having interns log onto social networking sites to check out an applicant's profile, and using the online world as another way to check references.
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This trend, combined with the growing population of sites like Facebook and MySpace, has many young people uneasy and unsure about how to navigate a new world, where the phrase "private life" is rapidly becoming an oxymoron.
B-schools don't want their students to flounder in the job pool, so administrators and professors are beginning to advise students on maintaining a professional presence on social networking sites, in e-mail, on personal Web sites, and blogs. "The 'wide' part of the phrase World Wide Web is actually the entire world," says Keith Stemple,
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