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It probably goes without saying that we're all on our best behavior when we know certain people are watching. Most intelligent people I know wouldn't get roaring drunk and make total idiots of themselves in the same room as the head of the company they work for, nor would they probably talk about how much pot they smoke at a job interview. I doubt they'd tack photos of themselves posing seductively in their underwear up on the public bulletin board at the grocery store either, because there's a chance of literally anyone seeing it, bosses included.

However, these same people think nothing of doing all of these things and worse on publicly accessible websites like MySpace, YouTube, or Facebook. They forget that the internet is, for all intents and purposes, a public place. It's a place that literally anyone has easy access to, and where everyone you know stands at least a chance of making an appearance sooner or later and getting a long, hard look of their own at how you choose to present yourself. It's everyone's own responsibility to realize this and to behave accordingly.

As far as I'm concerned, anything done, said, or displayed publicly is fair game when it comes to judging another person's character, and you really can tell a lot by how someone chooses to act in front of the general public. If people think it's cool to present themselves on MySpace or YouTube as total idiots, bragging about how promiscuous they are or how drunk they get on the weekends, that says an awful lot about who they may really be and what their values might be like. Most of us know this already. After all, we've all probably Googled someone we were dating or scoped out their MySpace to see if they're really relationship material or not, right? If we found anything "interesting", it probably influenced our final decision on the matter, too.

It stands to reason that such revelations might lend a lot of insight as to how good an employee the person in question may or may not be as well. After all, if I were running my own company and had to count on employees to help me make the most of the business my livelihood depends on, I would certainly want the most dependable, reliable, level-headed individuals for those positions that I could possibly get. If scoping out someone's public internet persona before making major decisions about them will help me make sure I'm getting such employees, then so be it.

That said, would I have my doubts as to whether or not Suzy Q should

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