After laughing my way through Careerbuilder.com's list of the most unusual resume blunders (my favorite was the candidate who proclaimed he worked well in the nude) I realized that one of the most common blunders of the day wasn't mentioned.
Many of my clients hire young seasonal staff to work as camp counselors, lifeguards, recreation leaders and other front-line positions. To be hired most complete applications and interviews. Common sense dictates that prospective staff present themselves as trustworthy, reliable and dependable. After all, recreation staff are often responsible for the safety and well-being of children. Whether they know it or not, they will be role models. Kids and teens will look up to them; they want to be like them and act like them. So, while applications may paint the picture of the perfect employee -- today's employers are using the Internet to dig deeper. Social networking sites such as My Space and FaceBook are as common to today's teen and young adult as the telephone (I'm talking about old school land line phones) was when I was growing up. The difference between phone conversations of the 70's and 80's and My Space is that no one had ongoing, 24/7 access to my conversations (except for an annoying brother or sister picking up an extension every now and then). Today's youth seem to forget that anyone -- parents, relatives, prospective employers and college admission counselors can access My Space, too. 
As a young adult I was a very motivated, conscientious employee. But that doesn't mean I would have wanted my boss to see me in action on a Friday or Saturday night. Sure, times have changed. But there are certain rights of passage that are common to every generation. So while "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" and most of us, at one time or another, are "Born to Be Wild," it may be up to yesterday's hippies to teach today's youth the value of discretion and privacy.
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