Online profiles – It's not about hiding from employers
Take 5 minutes to flick through your friends pages on Facebook and you'll notice that it's not uncommon for them to post photos and stories of themselves and others at last night's student union party or club night. Facebook has become one of the main ways of capturing university memories, in particular the parties that play such a big part of day-today campus life.
But, as topinternships.com investigates, an increasing number of employers are using Facebook and similar sites to take a sneaky first look at potential employees.
Greg Davies is about to start his penultimate year at one of the top 5 universities in the UK, has a great CV, and has just started looking for an internship at an investment bank next summer.
Greg has personal profiles on Bebo, MySpace and Facebook – just like millions of other university students across the UK. He agrees that all of his profiles could give a less-than-favourable first impression of him. "I'd hope that employers wouldn't have access to my personal Facebook profile." Unfortunately for him, they might have.
Two of them had hidden profiles but one we were able to access – let's just say that it gave us a good impression of the person that we might have employed. 
- Sue Correa
In a recent TopInternships.com poll, 44% of employers that use the site said that they would consider looking on potential intern's Facebook profile.
Sue Correa is the HR Director at a medium-sized marketing company based in London. "We employed an intern last summer – we had 3 candidates and before the final interview we checked them all out on Facebook. Two of them had hidden profiles but one we were able to access – let's just say that it gave us a good impression of the person that we might have employed."
But, there may be a way of using this to your advantage – and having an online profile is not necessarily about risking your levels of employability. Tom Harrison, Head of Business Development at QS, suggests another option. "If you feel that you need to have an online profile that can be accessed by the public, then students would be better at looking at professional networking sites like LinkedIn. A LinkedIn profile allows you to enter your professional and educational information, and link to other people in similar disciplines and sectors to you." Having a profile on a site like this offers you the chance to direct potential employers to a site that will work for you.
Sue Correa says "We would welcome the chance to look at a potential applicants on-line profile, especially if they had taken time to build it to show us what they could potentially achieve whilst working for us."
Although it is traditionally a tool for working professionals, more and more students are finding their way on to LinkedIn to advertise themselves for jobs and to start to build their professional network.
TopInternships.com challenged Greg to open a LinkedIn account and see if he could use it to aid his internship search. We caught up with him a month later "Since opening my LinkedIn profile I have managed to connect with a number of professionals in the Investment banking world, and have been given information on how to go about my application as well as finding out about a whole number of opportunities that I hadn't realised existed."
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Sources: THE QS World University rankings
