The lines are starting to be drawn around online privacy, not only in employement, but in higher education. From Timothy Lee at ArsTechnica:

[Governor] Brown also signed related legislation that prohibits universities from requiring their students to disclose social media passwords. The governor’s office cited a growing problem with universities snooping on the accounts of student athletes.

This does not appear to protect students (or employees) from acts that they do online from being held against them if it is open to the general internet/public. It might sound vain or egotistical to google yourself, but you can bet other people might. Would you rather have you know what they might find before they do?[1]

If you have a common name, that other John Smith, might get you wrongly slandered and you might want to know about it before a particular employer or admissions office does.

Make sure to log out of your google account before you google your own name. Otherwise your results will be biased much more to you then a general google search might other be so. Also, google search results can be personalized based on your cookie history. Instructions to turn off both on google’s support site ↩