The New York Times reported today that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) settled a case brought by an employee who was fired for criticizing her supervisor on Facebook. The employee’s manager viewed a post that the woman made from her home on her personal Facebook account, took offense at the criticism and fired the employee for violating corporate policy.

The immediate reaction online was that the settlement meant that employers could no longer enforce corporate discipline on social media platforms, but a closer examination reveals that precise and thoughtful social media policies will still be enforceable.

From a cursory examination of the dispute, it appears that the employer did not have a specific social media policy in place and instead relied upon an overly broad prohibition on all employees from discussing their wages, hours and working conditions with co-workers and others while not at work. It seems that the NLRB found this prohibition too restrictive and arrived at a settlement that reinstated the employee and encouraged the employer to take steps to protect its interests more appropriately.

So, how can companies protect themselves in this era of social media exhibitionism?

1. Create a detailed social media policy and have it read and signed by all employees. Most companies have confidentiality agreements, but these are not enough – they must also arm themselves with a carefully crafted social media policy that addresses specifically how employees are expected to behave in online forums when representing the company and detail any social media prohibitions.
2. Clearly identify the type of information that the company regards as privileged or confidential and is never to be revealed or discussed online. Companies can clearly define trade secrets and proprietary information and insist that they never be discussed or revealed online, but will likely have difficulty banning all discussion of workplace events.
3. Require that employees who engage in social discussions concerning the company clearly identify themselves as company employees and include a disclaimer that the comments they make are their alone.
4. Prohibit the use of company logos or trademarks unless specific permission is granted for their use.

There’s no doubt that the proliferation of social media platforms and the increase in workforce participation on these platforms for both professional and personal reasons will introduce new and unforeseen complexities that even the most thorough social media policy can’t fully resolve, but every company should take these first steps to protect their brand, their reputation and their intellectual property.

Off color comments in status updates. Photos of candidates drinking, smoking assorted substances or engaged in sexually explicit behaviors. Racist, sexist or vulgar references. You name, it and some job candidate has done it. Publicly. For all the world to see. And react to.

Since the latest surveys indicate that over 80% of hiring managers check out their potential hires online before making a job offer, it’s essential that you sanitize your online profiles, especially Facebook.

First Step: Create Lists

It’s still surprising that most Facebook users don’t realize that they can segregate their Facebook contacts into series of lists, each having its own precisely defined level of access to status updates, comments, personal info and photos. Facebook provides privacy tools that let you set specific permissions on a very granular level for virtually every element on your Facebook page.

Consider how many different groups of people that you connect with daily. Your closest friends. Former friends who now barely register as acquaintances. Your family. Professional contacts. Even people you dislike but don’t want to unfriend because of the dramatic repercussions. How do you manage them all?

With lists.

The easiest way to create a list is to click on the Account drop-down menu in the upper right corner of your Facebook page and select Edit Friends.

A window showing all of your Friends will pop up with a small button in its upper right corner titled Create a List. Those clever readers may have already surmised that clicking this button will enable you to create your assorted lists. At a minimum, I would suggest that you create two lists: Professional and Personal (feel free to adopt clever names of your choice) and assign every friend to one of your lists.

Step Two: Assign Every Friend to a List

For most people, it makes more sense to create multiple lists and to assign different levels of access to each. I have a list for All Access (a very limited number of very close friends), Family (Mom, gets to see most, but not all of what I post), Professional (almost always my default new connection list whose members are granted access to a limited amount of my Facebook content), Personal (social friends, but not close enough to give an All Access pass), XXX (friends that I no longer want to connect with but don’t want to publicly unfriend. They get access to virtually no content but still appear as friends.)

Give some thought to how you want to segregate your personal connections and create a list for each category of acquaintance. Then, hover your mouse over each friend on your list, click on the Edit Lists drop down and click on the list that you’d like to assign that person to.

Did I mention that you need to assign every friend to a list? Let’s review why. If every person you’re connected with is in a list, then it only takes a few clicks to change the settings for dozens, hundreds or even thousands of contacts to reflect your changing preferences. If you have friends that are not assigned to any list, then they have a generic Friend access to all the content on your Facebook page and altering access will demand that you do it person by person. Believe me, it’s easier to take the time now to assign every friend to a list than to try to adjust preferences in 6 months clicking through your entire expanding Friend list.

TIP: when you receive a friend request, Facebook presents you with an immediate option to assign that new friend to a list. Always take advantage of this option, click the drop down arrow and immediately pick a list to assign every new friend.

Step Three: Customize Your Privacy Settings

Now that you’ve got every friend assigned to a list, it’s time to grant or restrict their access to your Facebook content. Facebook allows you to customize access on a granular level by clicking on Account > Privacy Settings and then clicking on the Customize Settings option.

Step Three: Customize Your Privacy Settings

You’ve now entered a magical world of privacy delight, with the ability to shield any post, comment, photo or status update from any individual, any list, or any combination. The possibilities are endless.

The content you need to protect is assigned to three categories: Things I Share, Things Others Share and Contact Information.

Let’s start with Things I Share.

As its section name suggests, here is where you control access to all the content that you post to your Facebook page. Clicking on the box to the right of each option lets you make a quick selection to restrict the content to Everyone, Friends of Friends or Friends Only, but we want to be more precise than that and select the actual lists of people to restrict access, so you’ll want to click on Custom edit.

This selection pops up a window that presents you with the ability to both grant and restrict access to the specific element you selected. If you post a lot of personal information and updates to your Facebook page, you may not want your Professional contacts to see them. Here’s where you get to select who gets to see the items you post.

In my example above, I’ve elected to hide my posts from those people who’ve been assigned to my Professional list. And if I want to restrict access to more lists, or even specific contacts, all I have to do is start typing the name of the list or the individual and Facebook will present me with an alphabetized list of options to select from.

Below I’ve selected to hide my posts from my Professional and Family lists and from one individual, Andrew Holland (nothing personal, Drew, just using you as an example).

It’s essential that you go through every option and consider who you want to allow to view your personal information. Do you want your professional contacts to keep updated on your relationship status? Do you want your bowling team to see your vacation photos? Do you want your boss to know that you updated your location status at 2 am at a local gentleman’s club?

TIP: when you create any new status update, you have an option to override your default privacy settings for any individual post. When you enter your update, simply click on the padlock icon (see below) to reveal a privacy setting dropdown menu that allows you to grant or restrict access to this single update to any individual or list of friends. It comes in handy when you want to post a wildly funny update from your best friend’s bachelor party but don’t want your Mom or girlfriend to know. Keep it in mind.

Step Four: Protect Your Photos

More than 2.5 billion photos are uploaded to Facebook every month. And approximately 95% of these photos are of college students with a beer in their hands or a scantily clad blonde in their drunken embrace. OK, so that’s a statistic that I just made up. But from my recent review of college students’ Facebook profiles at a local Carer Day, that figure isn’t too far off the mark.

It’s understandable that you want to share the photos of yourself engaged in bacchanalian revelry with your closest friends. But too many students are also sharing these photos with the head of Human Resources at Big Corp. during their interview process. And then wondering why their fabulous interviews never resulted in a job offer.

Lock your photos down. Click on the Edit Album Privacy link at the bottom of the Things I Share section to select which photo albums will be shared with whom.

Once you click through, you’ll be presented with a listing of every photo album on your Facebook profile. You need to click the down arrow by each album to select who will be allowed to see that album’s contents.

For example, I allow Everyone to see my Profile Photos, but I restrict access to family photos.

The photos I took during Thanksgiving vacation are personal and are intended to share only with Family and my All Access friends. Since I want to restrict their access, I click on the Custom edit option from the drop down menu next to my Thanksgiving 2010 album and select only those lists or individuals that I want to grant access to this album.

As you can see from my selections, I made this album visible to two lists: Family and All Access. Note that I didn’t have to specifically hide the album from any list. Anyone who looks at my Facebook profile who is not a member of my Family or All Access list will automatically be restricted from viewing this particular photo album.

Facebook allows its users to define access to any album on a very granular level. For example, you may grant access to a photo album to all your Friends but hide the album from one specific friend, or just your Professional list, or your Family list and three specific members of your Professional list. The important thing is that you take proactive steps to restrict access, especially to those contacts who you know only on a professional level.

Step Five: Repeat Privacy Customization for Things Others Post and your Contact Information

Many Facebook users have discovered that it’s their friends who post the most inappropriate material to their wall. Without protection, all of your Facebook contacts may be exposed to their vulgar comments, offensive website links or tagged photos of you in embarrassing situations. That’s why it’s essential to take charge of all content related to you that may be posted by others.

There are some real red flags to consider in the Things Others Share section. One of the most damaging actions that can blindside you and irreparably damage your online persona is being tagged in an embarrassing photo or video that gets shared with all your contacts before you’re even aware that it exists. Lock down the ability for anyone to tag you without your approval by restricting access under Photos and videos I’m tagged in.

The next potentially damaging option to restrict is: Can comment on posts. If you have any friend who repeatedly makes inappropriate comments, this is where you can restrict their ability to submit any comments on any of your posts.

Restricting the option Can see Wall posts by friends can protect you from potential embarrassment should any of your friends post offensive content to your wall. You may have no problem with one of your friends posting a tastelessly funny video to your wall, but would not necessarily want your CEO to see it. It’s an easy fix to let your Personal friends post but deny viewing access to your Professional contacts.

It’s probably wise to disable the feature that Friends can check  you into places. Most Facebook users still aren’t aware of the Facebook Locations feature that allows users to check into venues and see other Facebook users who are also there. The potential for personal damage is huge if someone checks you into a location without your knowledge or permission when you’ve told your boss or your spouse that you were somewhere else. Be safe. Click through and select Disabled.

You’re almost done.

The final step is to decide what Contact Information you want to reveal to the world or solely to your Friends.

From my personal perspective, the only information that I want Everyone to have access to is my email address. I don’t want my address or phone numbers publicly available, but if someone wants to contact me, I want them to be able to send me a message through email. I expect that the IM Screen Name option will someday be replaced by Twitter, Skype and other social media options, but these are the options we have to work with right now.

Once you’ve customized these Contact preferences, you’re nearly done.

Step Six: Preview Your Profile

Before assuming that your efforts to protect your profile are complete and successful, you need to check your work.

Facebook provides an easy way to preview how your profile will appear to anyone in your Friend list.

By clicking the Preview My Profile button at the top of the Privacy Settings page, you can select the name of any of your Friends to see exactly what they see when they access your Facebook page. Type in the name of a Professional contact, then a Family contact, then a Personal friend to confirm that they can only view the content that’s appropriate for their assigned list.

Finally, make it a point to review your Privacy settings every few months to make sure that new photo albums haven’t slipped under the radar and to ensure that the settings you originally created are still appropriate.

The audience of approximately 100 recent or pending college graduates gathered at The Plain Dealer’s headquarters in downtown Cleveland to listen to an assortment of speakers provide advice, motivation and insight into the daunting process of finding a real world career after college. The crowd of students was dominated by young women, who appear to have made up about 70% of the audience.

As the designated social media dilettante, my task was to convince this room full of Facebook aficionados of the need to create, maintain and promote a social media presence on LinkedIn instead of Facebook. Although all of the students were familiar with LinkedIn, none had built a complete profile that could competently and memorably convince a prospective employer of their professional value.

My presentation focused on the necessity to consider the impression they make with their social media content. As college students, they rarely, if ever, consider the long term consequences of indiscreet comments and photos that dominate the typical student’s Facebook page. I related stories from job seekers who lost dream jobs because of inappropriate or offensive content that surfaced during their job search and assured them that if any comment or conversation had the potential to offend, it would.

As with any professional on LinkedIn, they also need to recognize the importance of their first impression. What does their photo convey? Is their headline compelling and informative? Did they tell their personal story and convey their professional passions in their summary?

After my talk, I offered to review any student’s social media profiles to suggest how they could become career friendly. About a dozen students stayed to review their profiles, which was heartening, but what surprised me was that of the students who stayed to have their profiles critiques, all were young women. There were no young men who sought feedback, suggestions or critique of their own efforts.

Of course, this could be an anomaly, or it could reflect the miserly impact my presentation had on the young crowd. But it could also reflect gender based behavioral differences that can have long term professional consequences. The young women who are comfortable soliciting advice and prepared for critique will learn more, improve the quality of their professional product and develop valuable team building skills that will prepare them more completely for the professional world.

The young men who elect to embark on their own will discover that innovation, creativity and excellence are not solo pursuits. The best ideas and greatest innovations almost always result from group interactions, the amalgam of ideas and the absorption of both positive and negative feedback. Employers aren’t looking for brilliant loners, but for participative employees with the capacity to learn from their inevitable mistakes and contribute as part of a cohesive group.

If one day spent with the future of advertising and marketing professional is any indication, I’m betting on the women to dominate their field.

1. your education doesn’t match your claims – it’s amazing how many job applicants lie about their education credentials, despite the ease with which these can be checked. And some people make it easier than ever when their Facebook or LinkedIn profile lists an education background that doesn’t match the information on their resume. If there’s any discrepancy across your profiles, it will appear as though you’re lying. Be complete and completely truthful.
2. photos of you in compromising situations – you’ve gone through the interview process, and the hiring decision comes down to you and one other candidate. You have a photo page displaying you chugging from a beer bong, passed out at a friend’s party and carousing in Cancun. The other candidate only presents circumspect shots of gatherings with family and friends, without any hint of drunkenness or out of control behavior. Which of you is the safest hire? It’s essential that you sanitize your photos, untag yourself from unsavory photos in friends’ photo albums and set up privacy constraints that restrict access to your personal photos. Examine your profile as an employer would and remove any item that could be compromising.
3. lie about qualifications – again, your online personal profiles frequently contain a wealth of information about previous jobs, dates of employment and job titles. If they don’t match the information you provided your potential employer, you’re out of contention. It’s also important to know that if you have a blog – whether personal or professional – your prospective employer will likely read that also to gauge your appropriateness for hire. And if your blog posts about your job don’t match the details you provided the potential employer, you’ll be perceived as deceptive.
4. badmouth employer or staff - the Internet is forever. Too many job seekers forget that inconvenient fact. The blog post, tweet or comment that you wrote last year blasting your former employer, revealing personal details about your boss or abusing your coworkers will never disappear. Intemperate comments will raise questions about your judgment, discretion and temperament, so be careful in your postings. When in doubt, don’t hit “Submit.”
5. discriminatory comments – any comments that you make online that can be interpreted as discriminatory, racist or sexist can eliminate you immediately from consideration. It doesn’t matter if you think you were being funny, sarcastic or ironic. Companies are risk averse, and simple won’t take the risk of hiring someone with discriminatory attitudes. Any comment you make in a public forum, like Twitter, or on your Facebook wall will be reviewed and judged so it’s best to refrain entirely from making incendiary or offensive comments.

There are ways to protect personal contact on most social media platforms. Facebook, which contains the most personal information, allows you to determine precisely who gets to view your wall posts, profile information and photos. Users can create multiple lists of friends, some who have all access permission while others have restricted access to a small subset of your online content. Learn how to manage your privacy settings, sanitize your online photos and, above all, simply tell the truth.

The explosive growth of Facebook and its use for both personal and professional networking has revealed some cautionary tales from individuals who didn’t anticipate the damaging potential of too-familiar, vulgar or offensive profile content.

The destructive potential of an artless profile was revealed last week in a post written by Cleveland blogger clevelandsaplum. Her post detailed a candidate search for an addition to their public relations staff. After the first round of interviews, one candidate stood out as the clear favorite. But when the staff did a quick Google search and checked out his public Facebook profile, he lost any chance of being invited back.

Visible to anyone with access to Facebook, and shielded from no one was this stunning paragraph:

About Me:
I am awesome. I run sh**. I had relations with your girlfriend, and yes I got it on tape. I scoff at those less fortunate than me (read: everyone else). I tend to laugh at the handicapped as well as foreigners. I am a firm believer that women are without a doubt the weaker sex. I know more than you. I am a ridiculously huge deal. I’m utterly gorgeous, you (most likely as a result of terrible genes or an unfortunate run-in with the business-end of a shovel) are not. I make fun of ugly people, because they are ugly and they deserve it. My social life is clearly something that you will never experience because you are ugly, unpopular, or a severe combination of the two. I throw sh** onto my neighbor’s porch because I am better than them and they can’t do sh** about it. My friends are also better than you and they will let you know it. I break other people’s stuff. I do whatever I want without any regard for the repercussions. I intentionally ruin the environment via littering, not recycling, and other harmful action. I am an ass****.

Although it’s likely that this individual was attempting to be sarcastic and humorous, his description was highly offensive to those who viewed it within the company and it raised flags concerning his judgment and discretion. And in a heated competition with a dozen other qualified applicants, this was reason enough to eliminate him from consideration.

Now, go check out your own social media profiles and see if you’ve written anything that could offend or concern a potential hiring manager.

Then read these instructions to sanitize and protect your online reputation. Customize your privacy settings to restrict access to your personal information. Segregate all of your contacts into different lists, each with differing levels of access to your updates and photos. At a minimum, you should have a Personal list for your closest friends and a Professional list that allows you to connect with professional contacts but doesn’t grant access to all the intimate details of your life. Prevent photos tagged with your name from appearing in anyone else’s feed unless you specifically approve it. And restrict your personal updates solely to your close, personal friends.

Take control of your personal brand and online reputation before you become a cautionary tale yourself.

So, how can you build your personal network and increase your chances of finding your ideal job?  Here are some quick tips:

1. Create a blog that centers around your professional expertise. Then fill it with posts. Done right, your blog will be more effective than any resume in communicating the level of your professional knowledge and insight.
2. Make sure the name or tagline of your blog clearly conveys your special professional skills.
3. Create a series of posts that teach me something about what you do. Include pictures, diagrams, samples and even a portfolio of your most effective work product. No matter what your specialty, from driving a truck to running a hedge fund, there is plenty of material you can create to educate others.
4. Read and comment on other bloggers’ sites. Every day.
5. Let the other bloggers in your industry know you exist. Send them your posts. Start a conversation. And ask them to add your blog to their blogroll so the search engines find you and rank you.
6. Go to industry events. Go online and check the monthly schedules for all the professional organizations in your area. Then attend with a pocketful of business cards that includes all of  your social media contact information.
7. When you meet someone you’d like to work for, follow them on every social media channel. Read their blog, follow their tweets, read their LinkedIn profile. Learn everything you can about them so you can stay in touch and send them articles and links you know they’ll be interested in. Help them and there’s a good chance they’ll help you.
8. Follow staffing and recruiting professionals on Twitter, facebook and LinkedIn. Their blog posts and tweets are full of useful information that can help you refine your resume, hone your interviewing skills and alert you to job openings.
9. Clean up your online networking profiles to ensure that there is nothing embarrassing or potentially offensive. No photos of you drinking, smoking or engaged in any potentially disturbing activity. Untag yourself from any potentially offensive photos that exist on any of your friends’ photo pages. Remove any offensive or vulgar language. Then modify your privacy settings so your most personal information remains private and unseen except by your closest friends.
10. Search for and connect with similar professionals on all the major social media platforms. Start conversations with them, participate in online forums and contribute to their groups. Create a Twitter list that includes only these professionals so you stay focused like a laser beam.

Remember, by leveraging these social media platforms, you get a chance to reach not only your contacts, but the entire constellation of contacts that are just one or two degrees removed from you. And you never know who’s hiring.