So you modeled lingerie and the photographer posted the shots on his website. Or you ranted about your former employer on your MySpace page. Or your friend posted a jpg of you after you had a few too many at a party five years ago.

So what? What you do in your private timeis your ownbusiness right?

Wrong.

Digital dirt is derailing an increasing number of job searches, as recruiters’ use of search engines increase, according to research conducted by ExecuNet, a career and business networking organization.

A recent update of exhaustive research compiled by the company revealed that the influence of online research on hiring is on the rise: while 2005 saw 75 per cent of recruiters use search engines to learn more about candidates, with 26 per cent eliminating candidates based on what they found, that number rose to 83 per cent, with 43 per cent eliminated based on online findings last year.

"For better or worse, the Internet provides recruiters and employers with a wealth of unfiltered information that's used to help evaluate candidates," says ExecuNet CEO Dave Opton. "From a candidate’s perspective, there's no question that managing your reputation online is as important as it is offline."

Still, young job seekers are just waking up to the idea that their online profiles may be damaging their job chances, says Jennifer Kushell, president and co-founder of YSN.com – Your Success Network – an online career site for young adults, and co-author of the New York Times Best Seller, Secrets of the Young &Successful™ (Simon & Schuster, 2003).

"We just finished a study of graduating students from 50 countries that we'll be releasing in the fall, and while these are not yet final numbers, our tabulations to date have shown that more than a quarter of them said that there is ‘definitely or probably something online about them that they would not want their parents or employers to see,’" says Kushell, whose own company recently rejected a candidate after googling her.

"Our head of operations asked this girl in for an interview for an operations position, but then he googled and her MySpace profile popped up. The first song that started playing was Crazy Bitch [by Buckcherry], and then there were long rants about her current employer with plenty of expletives," says Kushell.

"Our head of operations emailed her and withdrew the offer for the interview and then recommended that she put her MySpace settings on private, as the page would be very damaging to her in her job hunt. An hour later she had taken the stuff down, but she also wrote back to tell us how terrible it was that we were rejecting her based on something that was on her personal profile."

But companies have every right to do so, says New York labor lawyer Raymond Nardo.

Nardo recently represented a woman who lost her job because of something her brother posted on the Internet.

"We were able to get her unemployment assurance benefits but we weren’t able to have her reinstated," says Nardo. (Employment assurance benefits are only available to employees who have been terminated but have not been found guilty of misconduct. Employees who quit do not receive benefits.)

According to Nardo, applicants and employees have no recourse when companies refuse to hire or fire them based on what’s been posted about themselves or their employers on the web.

"Employers do have to ask an applicant if they can contact someone to speak to them about their background, but they don’t have to get consent to do their own online investigation," Nardo says.

As for issues surrounding whether an employer has discriminated against an employee based on their race or gender prior to hiring, that’s very difficult to prove.

"It’s true that an employer can discover your race, gender or disability via the web or in an interview, but proving that that has been the reason for not hiring is very difficult."

The bottom line is be careful what you put out there, says Nardo.

So is the person interviewing you going to perform a search the moment you leave their office? Few recruiters will openly admit to googling candidates, but that doesn’t mean they’re not doing it.

In fact, many of them are, according to Mark Mehler, co-founder (with Gerry Crispin) of CareerXroads, a recruiting consulting agency.

Mehler and Crispin work closely with more than 80 major companies to better understand and adopt recruiting technology solutions to their staffing strategies and processes. Work session include a college recruiting colloquium which allows the co-founders to keep in tune with how companies are recruiting soon-to-be grads.

"Are recruiters checking out applicants online? Yes they are," says an emphatic Mehler. What Mehler finds surpising is that Millenials tend to underestimate the impact of their online profiles on potential employers.

"Some may even get upset about being checked out online," says Mehler, pointing to the son of a friend.

"I saw this teenagers profile online and there were some not so positive photos of him," says Mehler. "His parents, not to mention college recruiters and potential summer employers would not have liked to see what I saw. I tried to warn him but he just got mad at me."

Soon-to-be grads have to be careful about what they post web, says Mehler.

"In the real world, a savvy employer is going to do everything they can to find out more about a potential candidate," Mehler says. "Even colleges are doing it now.

Once the damage is done

So with all the potential damage that can be caused by your Internet profile, what can a student do to protect him or herself?

Regular monitoring is key, says Elizabeth Freedman, author of Work 101: Learning the Ropes of the Workplace without Hanging Yourself (Random House, 2007).

Freedman has encountered students who have suffered job search setbacks from web postings they didn’t even make.

"One student who approached me after I’d spoken at his university told me his offer for a summer internship had been rescinded based on a photo of himself posted on someone else’s MySpace page," says Freedman. "It was a spring break party photo and not a good one, from the employer’s perspective."

The morale of the story is that anything about you posted on the web, even if you didn’t post it yourself, can have an effect on your job search.

"That’s why it’s so important to monitor your ‘brand,’ on the Net," says Freedman, who googles herself regularly.

Job seekers can also create google news alerts for themselves, she says.

"As for smear campaigns, well I think most employers are smart enough to know whether things are true or grossly exaggerated," she says.

That said, a photo is harder to fake.

"If you act crazy in a photo be aware that it could get posted on someone else’s page," Freedman says. Once something has hit the Net, it’s near impossible to purge it completely.

"Some people will outright refuse to take something down," Freedman says. "And short of a lawsuit, which could be expensive and unsuccessful, you can’t force them."

But there are ways to minimize the damage, says Dan Enthoven, VP of Marketing for Trovix, a search engine software company that creates online recruitment tools for employers.

"Employers are definitely googling candidates. I’ve even googled them myself," says Enthoven.

"I googled this one guy just after I sent up an interview and found out he was a very prolific contributor to an online gun owner’s forum. If he’d come in to the interview looking like a thug, or if he’d lied about his hobby, I would have said ‘I don’t want this guy anywhere near the building.""

Fortunately for that candidate, his honesty and appearance made up for the questions his Net profile raised.

But candidates can’t count on getting a second chance once they’ve been googled, says Enthoven, adding that having no profile at all can be as bad as having a poor one.

"If I can’t find anything on someone who claims to have done stuff that should be there, it could mean the candidate is a fraud," Enthoven says.

So if you can’t or shouldn’t erase what’s already out there what do you do?

"First, you should have a LinkedIn profile that confirms your résumé information," says Enthoven, adding privacy settings for social networking pages on Facebook and MySpace are also essential. Job seekers can also bury unsavory postings by flooding the web with items about you that are complimentary.

"If someone posts negative things about you, puts tons of stuff on the net that is positive, information about your family or your hobbies or your church group, so the bad stuff only appears on page two. Very few employers or recruiters will read that far," Enthoven suggests.

The other alternative is to fess up and hope for the best.

"If you’ve already been careful and you’ve done your best to make sure anything posted by anyone else about you has been taken down, and you still get caught with your pants down, the best policy is to be completely honest," says Mehler.

"After all, the recruiters went to college too. If they whip out something you’d thought was hidden in an interview, just be honest and explain what happened. If you’ve done well in every other area and you really stand out, it may not prevent them from hiring you. Then again, it may."

Here are just a few tips to help you better manage your online profile:

• Be alert. . Enter your name into multiple search engines on a monthly basis to determine exactly what information is available to potential employers.

• Be proactive. Purchasing a domain name to display your resume, press mentions, and professional accomplishments will help create a more visible and professional online image.

• Be prepared. If there is negative information connected to your name online, expect that it will be uncovered before the interview process begins and develop key messages designed to answer questions that may arise.

-Tips courtesy of ExecuNet