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Employers are increasing turning to social networking sites such as Facebook to carry out additional, informal checks on potential employees.

According to research by Crone Corkill and FSS, 7.5 per cent of companies use these websites as part of the recruitment process, albeit unofficially.

More specifically it was found that the financial sector was perhaps most likely to use Facebook for this purpose, with a resounding 75 per cent of respondents at financial company FSS saying it was the most commonly used site.

Lee Svete, director of the career centre at Notre Dame University, told the NDSMC Observer Online: "There's no question we've had employers use Facebook to do background checks on students.

"Students are putting inappropriate information on that website. It's one strategy [employers] use to screen out students. That's the word they use: screen out."

Last month, Manpower UK revealed in research that 43 per cent of people in Britain would be "outraged" by the prospect of employers using social networking sites to procure information about their employees.

Furthermore, it found that 40 per cent of respondents had already taken steps to limit external access to information they had posted on sites such as Facebook and Myspace.

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