thirdcrank wrote:But I don't think your example detracts from what I'm saying. In a world where we are edging towards everybody having an online reputation, your friend has marked himself out as a delinquent. At the moment there's no downside to not being registered for facebook or even being barred - it may not always be so. And like so many blacklists, the person may not even realise why they are being rejected for things.
A few years ago we interviewed a guy for a technical programming role, the guy interviewed badly but once he'd left a bit of digging around the web showed him to have done some good work, we hired him and stuck him in a dark corner where he wouldn't need to interact with other humans. He's since done some class stuff on our core engines (as long as you don't spook him by saying hello in the corridors).
We routinely trawl the web for information, programmers usually have contributions to various stuff, online CV's and examples of their work, artists usually have online portfolios and designers often hang around certain sorts of chat rooms (which can be very revealing ). Where no online presence is available whilst we don't count it against anyone the question "why" is usually asked...
I do work in a geeky industry though so I doubt your average job seeker need worry.