The rise of the career futurist

I have been reading a lot lately about futurists and wondering whether or not I can and should call myself one. As a career practitioner, it seems that I am, more than ever, focusing on the future and trying to keep ahead (as much as I can) of trends in order to best help my clients and to inform my writing. After all, most people realise they can't change the past, but they might have some control over what happens in the time that is yet to come.

Not wishing to sound pompous or to just be jumping onto the latest bandwagon, before deciding whether or not to add this to my already lengthy repetoire of job titles I thought it best to do some research. So I started by googling the word 'futurist' (and wondering at the same time if there is something more futuristic that I should be doing, but hey, google has been pretty good to me up till now!).

I found out some interesting stuff. This site came up number one in the search results: wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn. The first thing I learned was that a futurist is 'a theologian who believes that the Scripture prophecies of the Apocalypse (the Book of Revelation) will be fulfilled in the future' - hardly a 'new' label then, how disappointing!

The next definition was: someone who predicts the future. How eclectic? Smacks of crystall ball gazing and John Edwards. (Who hasn't got an opinion on 'Crossing Over'?).

And the next: futuristic - 'of or relating to futurism; "futurist art"'.
I also learned, thanks to Wikipedia, that 'Futurist is an album released in 2005 by Alec Empire'. In fact, many songs, works of art, plays and movies of late have included 'futurist' somewhere in their titles, themes or blurbs. But don't get too excited yet, this term was 'first used to describe an artistic movement in Italy around 1910 that tried to express the energy and values of the machine age'. Dig a little further and you will find out that 'Futurism was a 20th century movement in art which encompassed painting, sculpture, poetry, theatre, music, architecture and gastronomy. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti initiated the movement in his Manifesto of Futurism, published in February 1909'. So, paradoxically, something that is futuristic may well describe things from the past.

Next link: 'One who studies possible futures'. How universal and ubiquitous! This could be interpreted to mean that anyone thinking about the future can be a futurist. All you dreamers out there, listen up - you have a new jazzy title!

In mainstream society, however, the term 'Futurist' has become quite serious, as commercial, political and community organisations alike struggle to ensure their own futures as well as cope with ever-changing needs and demands. Most of us are probably most familiar with this term as it has come to be used in the business world. In this sense, a futurist is someone who has some claim to being able to accurately advise on trends (and/or about how trends operate) to help enterprises plan for the future. (Sadly, it is this notion on which the Futures Exchange is also based, and we all know how successful that has been!).

But futurism is not all smoke and mirrors. I am an advocate in that I believe focusing on the future provides us with ample scope to fix something that is not working, change our lives for the better, and work towards achieving something we feel it is important.

For a career practitioner, this is a much more interesting and challenging way to work with clients. It also keeps us on our toes, and focused while we find ways to encourage and motivate our clients to build happy futures for themselves, through a combination of envisioning and practical tasks, a positive attitude, and a dose of faith.

Those of us who would like to call ourselves career futurists have some excellent role models on which to base our work. Well-respected and credentialled members of society who call themselves futurists are growing in numbers each year. Organisations, some of which operate in virtual space, are being set up at an alarming rate, and they are attracting people from diverse fields including geneticists, environmentalists, climatologists, public benefactors, defence personnel, politicians and community group leaders.

Australians who call themselves futurists include Bernard Salt (KPMG Partner) and Dr Marcus Barber (www.lufg.com.au.) Maree Conway (www.thinkingfutures.net) comes close to calling herself a futurist; Maree 'works with people in organisations to enhance their long term thinking capacity and to use that thinking to build stronger strategy.'

I have heard these and other futurists speak and what they have to say is compelling.I can relate to a lot of what they say to my own work, and there is definitely a level of commonsense in approaching careers work from a futuristic perspective. I will stop short of stating that everyone in the career development industry is, or should be, a futurist, however in order to be the best at what we do I believe we should all be treating the future with respect.

In my 'working definition' of a futuristic career development practitioner, he or she would be, at least:
1. assisting clients to create their 'preferred' future, to examine trends in their present occupation and industry, or the one they wish to enter, in order to help them make adequate preparation, including ongoing learning and skill development,
2. working alongside clients while they elaborate their future vision while at the same time being aware of what may happen in the wider world context (in order to minimise and manage the risks involved while taking advantage of the new),
3. taking time regularly to update their own skills and practices in order to continue being innovative in the way they go about doing their own work so that they can meet present and future needs,
4. engaging in activities such as ongoing reading, attending seminars and webinars, listening to and watching relevant broadcasts and reflecting on how these can inform best practice, and
5. contributing to an ongoing futures conversation by providing up-to-the-minute expert information on the world of work of today and beyond to media representatives, politicians, business or community leaders, or members of the general public.

If the future doesn't inform our practice, then, I would argue, we cannot really call ourselves career development practitioners. While no one can actually predict the future, it would be irresponsible of people like me not to incorporate some well-researched speculation into our programs.

And if you are likely to be seeking the services of a career practitioner, either as an individual or as an organisation, perhaps you should be asking them whether they consider themselves a futurist as well.

What's the story?

This week I have been preparing a workshop for the International Career Conference in Wellington, New Zealand on 20 November. The topic of this workshop is about using narrative, or story, to assist people to create career change.

I have always loved stories. An avid reader when I was young, I literally devoured books, continually exhausting my parents with requests for new paperbacks. At eleven, I started saving my pocket money to buy them myself: Anna Karenina and the two volumes of War and Peace were the first on my list(this was obviously my Russian phase). Before that it was the English classics, such as Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. Shakespeare took hold of me at around 12, followed by sci-fi (everything John Wyndham wrote), detective stories (Agatha Christie - who else?) and the poets - Robert Frost, TS Eliot and Banjo Patterson etc. saw me through to fifteen or so. Flaubert (Madame Bovary), Albert Camus (L'Etranger) and other assorted French writers caught my attention a bit later (part of my appetite for anything French. I must have been an unusual child.

These days I rarely have time to scan a page or two of a feature in the weekend magazines (although today I managed to read a piece on James Packer's life from last week's paper from beginning to end, each paragraph increasing my belief that the world really has gone mad, one person with all that wealth to squander on not just one luxury cruiser, but two, and of course then there is the stable of jet planes, houses in all the right places, la-de-da!).

I digress. But, like most people I guess, with each year that passes I seem to be able to find less less time (and inclination) for reading huge tomes (except for the years spent as an undergraduate in my early thirties). The fact is, I have been provided with stories aplenty to maintain my interest, real life ones which are really so much more fascinating, and yes, stranger, than fiction.

The stories I am talking about are truly remarkable - stories of escape from war torn regions and senseless torture, of starting life all ovaer again in alien countries with absolutely nothing, often not even a photo of the loved ones they had left behind, or who had perished. I've heard people talk about how they have bounced back and reinvent themselves after injuries and illnesses, financial ruin, disgrace and shame (eat your heart out, James Packer), in ways that are more than a match for the fictional characters that pervaded my youth.

Many of these stories have been told by people who have come to me as career counselling and coaching clients, some as government employment services clients, so I can't relate any of these here. Others are private clients, whose confidentiality I must also respect. But they are stories of adventure, crime, passion, anguish, death and despair, and above all, victory.

I am sorry that I have missed so many marvellous opportunities to document at least some of the stories I have been so privileged to hear. Hopefully one day I will get to write a work that incorporates some elements from them. The world certainly could do with some real life role models - everyday people doing extraordinary things, to rekindle our faith in humanity if nothing else.

Lately I have been doing a lot of thinking about the link between story, narrative and career. I have been thinking that, for each person, there is the story about their life and career, and there is another story that sits in the background, that actually drives us, tells us what is important, and guides us as we make important decisions. A lot of the time, when we make a choice about something, in the final countdown we say we decided on instinct. I am wondering whether this instinct is actually something that is primal, deeply rooted in our psyches.

Telling stories is part of who we are, our human-ness. Modern life has robbed us of the power of the story, through corporatisation, socialisation and taboos that tell us what we can and can't say, verbally and on the page or screen. To a large extent, we have lost our instinct, our roots, and we don't even realise it because in this high-paced world we do not allow ourselves the time to reflect and explore the inner recesses. Everything is show, our careers are all show. If you disagree, and think your career reflects the person you truly are, let me know!

Job Career and google - gobbledegook or a whole new language

I am a career development practitioner. What does this mean to you? If you are like most of the world's population, probably not much.

This is a problem. It is a problem for you, because without knowing about me and my colleagues and what we can do, you might be missing out on something unbelievably good: a better time at work, personal fulfilment,a feeling that life makes sense, and yes - achieving your dream career.

This is also a problem for me, and for my fellow career development practitioners, because without you, we have no job, we can't earn a living, and we can't achieve our own career dreams. We feel unfulfilled and dissatisfied.

The career development industry itself is just a little over one hundred years old. A man called Frank Parsons is the 'father' of our profession, establishing the first career assessment in 1907. Mr Parsons was the first person to show people that they could choose their own career. This was radical - prior to this time young people were handed a career, either through inheritance of the family business or because this was the work available in their area, and this was pretty much it for the rest of their lives.

Parsons' career planning tool was simple but effective, so effective in fact that career development practitioners still use a version of this today. Basically it involves establsihing career interests, working styles and personal preferences (or values) which become key career ingredients for that individual, then turning these into tangible career goals and developing a plan to make it happen.

Behind this simplicity, there is a lot of skill required. Unfortunatley, career development practitioners often do our jobs so well that we are almost invisible in the process. Let me explain.

If you are successful in your career and you have had the help of a career career adviser, counsellor, or coach, the success is all yours, and you will have put in some effort to make it happen. But perhaps a career counsellor was there at the start, helping you to sort through the haze of options, or to help you come up with ideas in the first place. Perhaps a course adviser was there to help you to make sense of the courses on offer to help you become accredited. Perhaps a career coach kept you motivated during times you thought it was all too hard.

These days, career development practitioners often take on all these roles to help you through each stage of transition. Obviously, to have all these skills requires a lot of training and ongoing skills development.

Even if you haven't ever actually seen a career person, our very existence has helped cause a mindshift. I am sure you would find it difficult to conceive of a time when you would have been stuck in a job for life, whether you loved, hated or loathed it. For this, you can thank the career professionals who have pioneered this way of thinking and working over the last hundred years.

If you have always thought that career people 'just work in schools', 'help with course selections', or 'are just for people who are not coping at work', it is time to think again.

You probably aren't aware that there are a lot of career development practitioners working from home offices or in co-located offices around the world. Alain de Botton's recent book called 'The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work' has a chapter on career counselling in which he describes the work of one rather quaint career development practitioner. Whether this is a good or bad advertisement remains to be seen; certainly people moving into this field come from a range of backgrounds and age groups, this is not addressed in de Botton's book.

OK, so what does all this have to do with google?

Given that the career development profession needs to be more widely marketed, and given that the Internet is arguably the best marketing tool in the world today, I am concerned that google may well dictate the future of our industry.

I have a website; it describes what we do accurately. Visitors often comment on how appealing it is, how easy it is to read, how professional it looks. They often decide to use our services. However, for every person who finds the site thousands of others do not. This is because the google search engine does not understand the words we use. Admittedly, it relies on input from searchers, who don't know what career development is - are you beginning to see the problem?

So, let's say you want to change jobs or figure out what you want to do with your life. What words do you enter into the search engine? Well, our recent research into google searches show that 'career advice' (which does not describe what we do at all well, nor does it sound attractive to most adults), 'resume help' and hardly sensible phrases like 'job career' and 'get help job' are popular. Should I change the words on my website from 'We are a group of career development practitioners' (which is the term we want you to know describes us and what we do) to 'We are job career people'?

Doctors, accountants and lawyers don't have these problems because their industry terminology was set well before the advent of internet search engines. But for the career development profession, we must now decide whether we should be led by the almighty cyberspace god Google, or to find some other way to get our message across.

I doubt that will happen, the Internet and google are far too entrenched. So just be aware that although we might just have to bow to public pressure and call ourselves 'career advisers', we don't actually give advice, but what we do give is so much more useful to you - we help you manage your working life in a way that reflects your individuality and prevailing needs at any one point in time.

How important is workplace fit?

After they receive instruction on how to take details of a job vacancy, one of the first things new recruitment consultants are taught is how to find the ideal candidate. They are taught to shortlist based on these three criteria:

1. Can they do it? (i.e. the job, which means they have the skills, experience and other requirements outlined)

2. Will they do it? (i.e. do they appear highly motivated, will they be happy to do the tasks, work at that level etc.)

3. Will they fit in? (i.e. to the workplace, with the team, will they be accepted by others)

Of all of these, No. 3 is the most difficult for recruiters and employers to get right. I am sure we all agree that a person who is a good fit will be happier, work more productively and probably stay on longer than someone who is a square peg in a round hole.

Anecdotal evidence from colleagues in the recruitment industry indicates that the 'best fit' criteria is fraught with difficulties. I would be interested to receive some real data if anyone knows of any research into this area.

The issues created by 'bad fit' employees include: excessive days off, poor performance, poor output, teamwork hampered by delays, right through to conflict and outright sabotage, all of which have a devastating affect on the bottom line.

So why do hirers get this wrong so often? There are many reasons, and not all of these can be blamed on human error. For instance, a couple of years ago, before the GFC, there simply were not enough people applying for positions, let alone ideal ones.

Now, we seem to have the opposite problem. With excellent candidates coming up for a large number of jobs, it is often a matter of choosing between two or more who seem equally ideal. While a recruiter may tend to place too much emphasis on assessments and impersonal processes, they will generally have a greater ability to remain objective than their client, who is more inclined to
- recruit 'people like us'
- look at the past, trying to fill a former employee's shoes, rather than focusing on how the replacement can help the organisation move forward into the future
- spend time gaining 'intelligence' from people in their network rather than relying on their own gut instincts
- select the person who interviews best (i.e. who appeals to their ego), rather than the one who is more likely to work hardest and most productively

Compounding the 'fitness' issue is that ephemeral issue of blatent discrimination - yes, it still exists, just look around a range of workplaces with eyes open to find real evidence that we have not become any more tolerant of people who are different to us, or aware of the negative results of prejudice. This is now more heavily cloaked, because we are sufficiently savvy to avoid expressing openly discriminatory remarks. With Recruitment 101 firmly embedded in their brains, no real data to work with, and an unwillingness to harm their relationship with their client,recruiters are often left to second-guess the 'best fit' part, usually based on their own preconceptions, on a hunch of how their client thinks.

So what is the best way to determine 'best fit'? I believe this has less to do with the physical attributes of the candidate OR their cultural background than with the prejudices of the hirer. For example, do they avoid hiring someone from India or Venezuela because of a preconceived idea about the standard of work they can expect, or the time they might front up after lunch? Do they fail to see the possibilities in any female candidates because 'they have always had a male' in the past? Do they eliminate a person who worked in an organisation they don't respect, when the reason that person left that organisation was they didn't like the way it was being run?

What if 'best fit' was based on a whole different set of criteria, such as 'having a different viewpoint' to the interviewer, or that the person who interviewed least well was potentially the best person for the job? This can happen, because often the person who is most keen on a position is the one who is most nervous and who, as a result, performs less well than someone who really couldn't care less if they got the job or not.

Arguably, one of the biggest interferences in the selection process is superificial appearances. Few people will admit to rejecting a candidate because he or she was too short, too fat, too 'foreign' in appearance, but it still happens, and far too often. If job interviewers had to 'blind interview' each candidate, so that they were unable to make assumptions based on presentation, would they be more successful? Obviously, because then they would have to focus on skills, strengths and the best fit of worker to the job. Add a voice distorter to hide accents and we are beginning to develop a recipe for success. And building a culture that welcomes people who might not look, dress, act and speak exactly the same as everyone else in the workplace will ensure that they fit most comfortably into the team. In a golbal, dynamic and unpredictable climate, giving the 'best fit' criteria a complete makeover is one step in the right direction for the bottom line and the future of an organisation.

Climbing the ladder - a good career strategy?

Traditionally, climbing the corporate ladder was the sole definition of career progression, especially for people working in medium to large organisations. This made sense - for much of the twentieth century the way to success, and bigger incomes, greater benefits, higher professional standing, was essentially via the incremental pathway.

Of course, the tendency to promote on the basis of seniority or 'runs on the board' meant that many people were made managers who should not have been. They didn't really care or weren't sufficiently invested in the work of the organisation; they had no people management skills; they were in the wrong place (or the wrong career); they were actually good at their job before their promotions but then became really bad at it once they stopped being operational. The 'climbing the ladder' rationale was reinforced by the idea perpetrated by society at large that promotion was good, staying in the same place (or worse still, being demoted) was bad, meaning there was a lot of pressure on people to work beyond their level of competence.

Since the 1980s, the ladder has become a strange beast. In many industries it became shorter, or a few rungs were pulled out, leaving a gaping hole between the workers and the top echelon. In others the bottom rungs started getting wider and wider.

Above all, long slim ladders were replaced by lots of short stocky ones. Many large organisations were cut up into little pieces, which by default led to flatter structures. Take for example the Commonwealth Employment Service where I used to work - there were 16,000 people and three levels of management within individual offices, let alone the regional offices, the zone offices, state and national offices. Come 1998 when the government of the day closed up most of the Department that provided the infrastructure for the CES, and farmed out the services it couldn't simply get rid of to the myriad Job Network agencies, anyone who wanted to stay in the industry found themselves back down the ladder by at least a rung or two.

Strangely, the middle management rungs seem to be growing back. Maybe organisations have realised these people did something after all? Maybe with everyone under so much pressure, they have found that burnout is becoming a huge economic and social issue, and their answer to all of this is to give some people responsibility for other staff members.

The new management structure bears few similarities to those of eras past. While some of the old inappropriate beliefs about worthiness related to position have disappeared, there are plenty of new things to worry about. If you are one of the people who is working in a middle management role, you are probably wondering whether it is everything it is cracked up to be. You are probably finding that you are expected to be 'operational' as well as 'managerial'. You probably find it hard to delegate to those under you because they are already so busy that there are no more minutes to be squeezed out of them. You probably find that when one or more of your staff take a few days off without notice (commonly now accepted as legitimate 'mental health days') you can't get in replacements because the budget won't allow it, or because no-one else knows exactly what that person does. You possibly end up doing their work plus your work, or find yourself making a decision between the two.

As a middle manager in today's working environment, who do you go to when you are not coping? How do you manage competing priorities and crisis situations? Are there resources in your organisation, or even externally, to call on? Or are these simply non-existent. What does all this mean for your career satisfaction and personal success?

Cast your vote in this month's poll so we can start to build a clear picture of the issues middle managers face, and so that we can start addressing them.

Reinvent Your Career - For Adults Only

This month is a highlight in the career diary, the Reinvent Your Career Expo is on in Melbourne over the weekend of 11 and 12 July. My career practitioner colleagues and I will be providing free career health checks and resume checks. We will also be offering a smorgasbord of seminars on a range of career and job search issues. You can find out more about this on the Career Dimensions web page as well as at www.reinventyourcareer.com.au.

This expo is aimed at adult career changers and so I have been thinking about how adults manage the career change process. It is understandable that students often have trouble working out what to do with their lives; after all, everything is new to them and they don't have a lot of life experience to work with.

But an inability to make good career decisions, and to take appropriate actions, is not restricted to young people. From my experience working with people across the lifespan and in diverse industries, I think we have a long way to go before we can say we do this well. I count myself in this group, if I am being honest. I have often found career change to be a difficult process, fraught with complications and strong emotions.

I have had trouble leaving a job that I have been unhappy in. I have dithered and delayed moving on to something better due to what I have argued is loyalty when really it had more to do with fear of the unknown. I have cried myself to sleep at night wondering why I didn't seem to fit in, couldn't develop a particular skill or do a task as well as others around me, and have berated myself for being lazy and not putting in enough effort when really I was simply a square peg in a round hole.

Does this sound familiar? What is even stranger is that, despite my ability to help others dream about the perfect career and then take steps to make it happen, I still struggle with all these issues myself. So it appears that knowledge does not always equal power!

But there is good news. Career change can and should be a highly positive experience. If we can identify the real issues, rather than laying blame on a difficult boss or boring tasks, we can begin taking real steps to move on.

At each stage in life we have different needs, and recognising when our needs have changed, or when we are no longer challenged in a particular work environment, is the first step to reinventing our careers.

Why don't you give yourself the opportunity right now to work out what it is you need from your career, and then measure these against your current job role. Are you feeling stressed, unchallenged, or just plain bored? You probably need to move on. If this sounds like you, why not start with one small step? See a career counsellor! Reply now and find out how you can reinvent your career.

The poll we conducted in July 'Have you ever stayed in a job past its use by date' attracted 7 responses - 6 Yes and 1 No. On the basis of this poll (which admittedly isn't truly representative of the population at large), 85% of people have stayed too long in a job. Which is quite believable, based on my own anecdotal evidencesourced from direct contact with clients.

How important is a university degree when competing for jobs?

My career coaching work provides me with plenty of opportunities to meet highly talented people, across a wide range of industries and occupations. Most of the clients I see are dedicated and hard working with a fantastic array of skills that are in hot demand, demonstrated by their high incomes and excellent appraisals. Not one of the people I have seen over the past two years has taken their career for granted, using every opportunity to increase their employability along the way.

I can easily see that these people have been assets to their employers in the past, and are respected in their current workplace. They will have no trouble getting a new job when they are ready to move on in their career - or will they?

Well, they shouldn't. But something quite strange has happened over the past two to three years. Subtle developments in thinking have caused a mindshift about what makes a candidate worthwhile, with the result that a university qualification is now viewed as a baseline requirement. This phenomenon may have been instigated by recruiters, desperate to find a surefire shortlisting mechanism. It may well be driven by new leaders who have all emerged from tertiary studies and can't imagine why anyone would dare step out in the world of work without at least an honours degree. Perhaps companies are sensing that they need to gear up to meet global workforce expectations. Certainly the universities themselves, hungry to fill their places and obtain their government funding, are getting the message out that you are nobody without an alumni pin to call your own.

So where does this leave my wonderful clients, some of whom have TAFE diplomas, others have clocked up twenty or more years in the workplace, many of whom have mortgages, families and other general living expenses? They would love to be able to fit in time to study, but a university degree takes quite a lot of time and effort to achieve.

There have been moves to address this perceived inadequacy in our over-thirties workforce. Universities have begun offering postgraduate vocational qualifications to assist people with work experience to obtain higher degrees, and to eliminate the need to obtain a Bachelor's degree before doing so. However, those who have a Graduate Certificate in something wonderful are still being told that these qualifications don't count for an awful lot if there is no undergraduate degree behind it.

This worries me on a number of levels.The first relates to advising my clients. Do I tell them to drop their wage to that of a casual waitperson like those who are twenty years younger are doing? Is this even feasible? What may happen at the end of a three or four year degree? Will creeping credentialism attack again and place them in the position of needing a Masters qualification?

My second level of concern relates to the obvious repercussions on our society as a whole when we no longer value what people have to offer in the workplace. Apart from the obvious economic and social implications, and the demoralisation that goes with rejection upon rejection in the job application process, there is a lack of fundamental commonsense about what makes the world turn.

I have a number of university qualifications, including an arts degree, and I am happy to have these achievements behind me. But they don't make me better at what I do, they are just one form of learning that make up my work intelligence.

I wonder just how realistic it is to expect a person who works a 60 hour week to add a study program into the mix. What are the damaging effects of having overworked, overstressed, underconfident workers who feel that nothing they have done or can do will be good enough.

It is definitely time for a rethink. If society at large is going to insist that everyone needs a degree, then we need to make it possible for them to get one. If we decide it really isn't that important, we need to rethink the messages we are telling ourselves and others.

Do recruiters really do background searches on jobseekers?

On speaking to a range of recruiters in the Melbourne area during the period March to May 2009 I found quite a mix of responses to this question. It is generally accepted in the industry that recruiters have, wherever possible, performed background searches. Let's face it, they can't rely on candidates to tell the whole truth about themselves. In a majority of cases this is not a problem, and who would want to know every little detail anyway? However, the cost of hiring an employee is significant and recruiters have their own reputation to uphold.

Traditionally, background checks have involved consulting referees prior to forwarding a shortlist of suitable candidates on to a client. In addition, more informal approaches have been adopted as well, such as speaking to someone who knows someone etc., which was always easier in smaller communities and niche areas than for general roles in large cities. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are all easy-to-access social networking sites which make background searching easier. Others come and go as well, but at the present time these are the sites accessed most often.

So, we know they do it, but just how widespread is the practice? Unsurprisingly, the responses I received fell into always, never, and sometimes categories. Those who fell into the 'always' category tended to be involved in recruiting for professional and executive roles where the stakes are high - large salary packages are involved, high levels of responsibility and security access. This was particularly widespread in niche areas such as finance, IT and HR.

Graduate recruiters would not admit to undertaking background searches across the board, but most agreed that they often perform background searches in the final stages, and especially when they are trying to separate two or more excellent candidates. On-hirer firms also fit into the ‘sometimes’ category. Recruiters who sometimes performed background checks using social networking sites were those sourcing candidates for retail, hospitality and administration roles, while those in the 'never' category included short term filling and blue collar roles. The reason cited most often was a lack of time, urgency of placement and the belief that it didn't really help with their decision making process.

Interestingly, of those who said they always performed background searches, around half said this did not make the selection process easier. It seems that if you dig deep enough you will find the dirt on anyone. Working out exactly which dirt relates to employment suicide is another big issue, with responses as varied as those undertaking the searches.

Generally it was accepted by all recruiters that jobseekers should be cautious about what they show the world. Examples abound describing how successful candidates have had offers withdrawn after an unfortunate activity was recorded and/or applauded on Facebook. The recommendation is that, if you must use the web to document everything you do and are, keep that one private, for viewing by your friends only. Have another that is available publicly to present you in the best possible light.