Looking for a job? Be careful with Hyves!

With the big boom of social networks sites, for instance Hyves, LinkedLn and Facebook it is getting more and more easy to find information about somebody.

Now.. I hear you thinking.. 'what's new about that?... I already knew this'.

However,

Be very careful with your Hyves page, photo's and 'krabbels' that your friends or other relatives publish on your Hyves page. It can cause bad luck in your sollicitation process. Recruiters say that they do not use Hyves-profiles of candidates in order to select people who are applying for a job, however the truth is different.

A master student Communication at the University of Twente researched which information from Hyves was used by recruiters to get an impression of their candidates. The student found that recruiters lied about what they said about the information they use.

The information posted on Hyves, for instance photo's or 'krabbels' by friends or other relatives seem to play an important role in the first selection phase of candidates that are applying for a job. the student found the strongest effect when candidates try to apply for a representative function.

So do not only try to be careful with posting messages and photo's yourself, but you should really make sure that 'strangers' have no access to one of your personal social network pages.