I submitted an application to a company through Gild.com, which is a service the company I'm applying to is using.
I entered my resume and my basic contact info, and was presented with a list of 20 or so social network profiles, most of which that I'd totally forgotten about.
Is it just me who feels this is sketchy?
These days, assume that any company you apply to will research you on line. They're allowed to use anything that's public information, which includes most social sites.
If you don't want employers to see something, it is your responsibility to keep it unpublished. Since companies may change their system's behavior and their privacy policies with little or notice, that means don't post anything you aren't willing to have exposed. And think twice before posting even in supposedly private services.
Basic principle: If you aren't paying for a service, you aren't the customer -- you're the product, and you're being sold to others.
Sorry, but that's the nature of the Net.
I would say that the site is actually doing you a service by reminding you of sites that you have accounts with but may have forgotten about. Many employers will do a public social media research on new hires and so you have to assume that any employee that you are applying to will see all of those sites. This way you can go verify that there is nothing publicly visible on then that an employer would find objectionable.
By doing a quick search of their own and showing that info to the job seeker, Guild.com is obviously hoping to strengthen candidates who apply through them.
