A Toxic On-Line Presence: The New Career Killer

A recent event at a soccer match in Toronto showing several fans abusing a female TV reporter with extremely lewd and crude comments, received major coverage in the mainstream media and has gone viral on Social Media.

One of these fans was fired from his six-figure salaried job when his employer saw the coverage. And his problems don’t end there. The toxic online presence he has created will follow him from now on.

It seems like every week we hear about famous people getting themselves in hot water because of ill-advised comments or pictures they have posted on Social Media. Yet many in our society continue this behavior, oblivious to the consequences.

Recruiters, employers and hiring managers report that close to forty percent of the applicants they review are rejected because of what they find out about them online. And this applies from college graduates to senior executives.

A March 25, 2015 in the Irish Independent newspaper gave the example of a high-ranking individual who was eliminated as a candidate for a position he applied for because of ill-advised comments he had posted online. In the pre-Internet world, he would have been a shoe-in for the job. In the post-Internet world, he killed his chances by his ignorance of the consequences of his online behavior.

We would be doing our graduates a big favour if we insisted that, at the beginning of their job search, they answered the question: “What would a search of the Internet reveal about me?”

Ron McGowan is the author of the bestseller “How To Find Work In the 21st Century”

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