TMCnet Feature

What does a potential employer see when he or she looks at your Facebook (News - Alert) profile? Photos of you doing keg stands in college or a profile of a serious, committed professional? You might think...wait, employers are looking at my Facebook profile??

The answer, increasingly, is yes. You may keep your page with high security settings so that only family and friends can see it, but in some cases, employers have actually demanded to see Facebook pages as a condition of considering an applicant's resume.

But does your Facebook page really tell an employer what they need to know about you? Yes, according to a new study from Northeastern Illinois University, the University of Evansville and Auburn University.

According to Yahoo's Today in Tech blog, the research used a group of three raters — one university professor and two students — who examined the Facebook profiles of 56 students with jobs. Using only the information on the subjects' Facebook profiles, including pictures and comments, the raters provided each of the 56 subject students with scores in areas such as friendliness and intellectual curiosity.

Researchers found that there was a strong correlation between an employee's success in his or her job and traits revealed on the Facebook page such as conscientiousness and agreeability. Interestingly, those subjects with the most friends were rated highest, as were those who traveled and had a wide array of interests, said Today in Tech.

So, maybe those photos of you doing keg stands in the dorm won't harm you as much as you thought.