Jim Bright is all a Twitter about the potential of virtual networking — just remove those photos.

Selena from Northbridge writes: "A friend suggested I apply for a vacancy at the company he works at. I got to the interview and everything seemed to go well.

I was practically offered the job. Then I heard nothing and after two weeks, I called them and was told someone else got the job.

"To my horror, my friend then told me that his colleagues found some pictures of me at a party on a friend's Facebook account and some tweets from me pointing to them. Can employers discriminate like this?"

Selena's question is timely for me as I have spent the week updating one of my job-hunting books in Britain to include material on social networking.

In my research, I discovered, to my dismay, that much of the advice to job hunters treats social networking as a potential evil that will derail their career. Perhaps the world is full of people like Selena who have had the misfortune of having their happy snaps virtually shared around their potential employer's office.

There is another side to social networking and job hunting that is rarely discussed.

Social networking is a term that broadly describes websites and online services that facilitate the exchange of messages, articles, photos, files and music with other users.

Those who get to share your stuff are called contacts, friends, followers, subscribers and, generally, the user has a choice of what they share and with whom (although many people might not realise just how much of their stuff is visible to others). It is mandatory for these services to have daft names such as Bebo, Badoo, Facebook or Twitter.

On the face of it, Twitter seems to be the most preposterous as it allows you to send messages to others that are limited to 140 characters - yet it is also one of the fastest-growing sites.
 
For instance, blogger Craig Thomler claims there are about 200 Australian government Twitter sites and the election has got every pretty (and not so pretty) pollie tweeting.

So how can this be good for career development?

Susan Whitcomb and Chandlee Bryan, authors of the very practical The Twitter Job Search Guide (JIST Publishing), claim: "Twitter is the new face of virtual business networking and is fast becoming an essential career management tool. In fact, many recruiters predict Twitter will replace job boards as a primary source for finding quality candidates."
 
They argue that job hunters should spend 15 minutes a day searching Twitter for job opportunities, as well as send out tweets that reflect their own abilities and interests.

Similarly, LinkedIn (sometimes called Facebook for grown-ups) provides a form of virtual networking that allows job hunters to set out their CV and achievements, as well as interact with potential employers and colleagues by contributing to various groups and forums. There is also a function that allows others to write testimonials about you.

Of course, as I've mentioned many times, a great starting place online is at MyCareer.com.au and other job boards.

As we all begin to adapt to the brave new world of virtual communication in its ever-evolving forms, we need to move beyond seeing only the dangers of revealing inappropriate information about ourselves to seeing the possibilities for developing effective networks and building and communicating a strong professional reputation.

If I were Selena, I would ask my friend to remove the pictures and delete the tweets.

At the same time, she is clearly quite tech-savvy, so I would encourage her to get reconnected, post her CV on MyCareer.com.au, get a LinkedIn account and start tweeting and searching Twitter at every chance.

Jim Bright is a professor of career education and development at ACU and a partner at Bright and Associates, a career management consultancy. Send emails, clearly marked "For publication", to brightside@jimbright.com. Follow him on Twitter @TheFactoryPod or LinkedIn at au.linkedin.com/in/jimbright.

For more workplace advice, see mycareer.com.au/advice.