At a recent chamber event I heard a presentation advising employers that they should be doing fairly regular post-hire background checks on employees in addition to pre-hire checks. The arguments were for were pretty persuasive. The issue got me thinking about social networking sites. The sites, and therefore the lives of their users, are increasingly transparent as they are indexed by Google and other search engines. Users have some control over who views their information but for many professionals, those who want to be seen on LinkedIn, Spoke, Plexo, and perhaps Facebook and MySpace, they invite the public to view them.

Sadly, I’ve seen that many people don’t always use the best judgment as to what could or should be reported in these public space - admittedly this is more of an issue with Facebook and MySpace than the others.

At any rate, it got me thinking if these online arenas should be monitored by our employers [if they aren't already] as a means to protect their brand. I suspect the answer would be a resounding ‘Yes’ from security minded folks out there [and probably a few hardworking brand managers too] and balanced by an equally adamant ‘No Way’ from privacy advocates. And while I might philosophically fall in line with the privacy group I’m also of the mind that we’ve put this information out there ourselves. We control it and if we can’t show some basic good judgment we probably deserve whatever consequences result.

So I’m curious if anyone has heard of a case in which an employee was ‘let go’ because of a social network profile that wasn’t consistent with the corporate brand? Or, if someone was let go because it was clear from their LinkedIn [or CareerBuilder etc] profile that they were looking to leave the employer anyway? Or, if not, do you think it is a proper investigative avenue for employers? When we join a social networking site do we surrender our rights to privacy?

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