There is a new trend among employers, who keep up to the times and use social networking Web sites to conduct an extra check of their future employees. The announcement was made by a job-search site called Careerbuilder.com, which claims that more than 20 percent of the surveyed companies admitted to verifying their candidates’ profiles on sites such as Facebook and MySpace. Another 9 percent explained that this measure will be included in their future hiring process.

24 percent of employers admitted to have hired a certain person based on his social-networking profile, while 33 percent chose not to go through with the process after viewing the profiles. The main reasons for this decision are photos showing use of drugs and alcohol or inappropriate and provocative images.

The Web site strongly suggests that all users looking for a job should check their profiles and delete such photos or set their profiles to private so they will not be accessed by people they do not know.

These profiles can be considered just as valuable as a CV, providing valuable information for an employer looking for the best possible candidate. Most people tend to brush-off their CV information when applying for a job and even the interview can be cheated in some occasions. This is exactly why another source, such as a social-networking profile, can provide the needed data for reaching if not a good decision, then at least, a better one.

This idea is rather new and not many people know about it, leaving companies to search away for their employees’ profiles. As the news spreads it will be a lot more difficult to gain access this information.