In 2006 – before the Facebook and Twitter tide – I wrote this:
“Call them The Transparent Generation.
They're the first true children of the hyperconnected information age, and they were using the Internet before they could write cursive. Now they're starting to graduate college, ready to launch their careers as responsible, tax-paying young adults.
And many of them are waking up to a nagging concern about their online trail of screw-the-establishment web sites, embarrassing party photos, gushy poetry blogs and message board diatribes - all created way before they ever thought they might be Googled by a potential boss.”
Five years later, those same potential bosses have institutionalized the Internet hiring experience by creating a market for companies like Social Intelligence, a business service that “scrapes the Internet for everything prospective employees may have said or done online in the past seven years.”
Read: Transparent Generation realizes downside to growing up online.
