Written by Marilee Teasley, Career Counseling Graduate Assistant, Career Center

I was recently at a conference for academic advisors, and one particular session that was packed was called #Advising@YourSchool. It focused on ways that academic advisors can better understand and communicate with their students.

A new idea surfaced that created a buzz in the room—advisors should not only set up social media accounts to communicate with students, but they should find ways to monitor these networks to see what students from their college are thinking.

Specifically, advisors were asked to consider finding their school’s #problems hashtag on Twitter.  Every college seems to have one—or even many. These hashtags are full of candid rants about the frustrations that students face at their institution. On the darker side of Twitter, there are even accounts dedicated to posting mug shots and pictures of drunken and passed out students at the latest party. Monitoring these hashtags can really burst someone’s bubble if they believe that everything is perfect and help promote growth and change, but they can also reveal a student’s unprofessionalism.

The battle over privacy in social media has been growing for awhile—should employers search for candidates’ social media profiles and include them in the hiring process, or is this crossing the line? Should students censor themselves on their public profiles?

Regardless of whether or not monitoring students’ profiles is ethical or fair, it happens. So be smart with your social media accounts, especially if they’re public. It took one simple Twitter search to find this tweet:

Is this an image that you want to portray to employers?