How can jobs look at your social media with privacy settings?

[freestyle5700]

Was in a debate with my wife about how can a potential employer look at your Facebook or other social media. If my privacy setting is set so that only friends could read posts or look at pics/info, how could an employer possible look at my account for possible bad stuff(not that I have anything offensive anyways). I'd be right in assuming they can't right? Unless they added me as a friend which I've never heard of.

[freestyle5700]

The only other way would be through your friends. Facebook changes it's privacy settings so often and most recently they've changed that bar that was added on the right hand side that shows your friends commenting on other people's who are not your friends photos, statuses, etc. That's one way a potential employer may be able to see some of your profile information.
Best bet is to check often whether any new privacy settings have been rolled out and to not put any potentially damaging photos or status messages up. You won't have to worry if you don't have much to hide.

[skinnypancake943]

Employers have no special privileges when it comes to social media profiles - if you've set your privacy settings in a way that does not allow anyone outside of your friends list to view your profile, employers can't see it (unless someone working for the company is in your friends lists).

Things they can see regardless of your privacy settings include things like your profile picture, pages that you're a member of and pages that you own (if they went on the page your name could be visible).

It is becoming more popular for employers to check the social media accounts of potential employees on sites like Twitter and Facebook, but with the right settings you can avoid this.

There are even sites (e.g. 7daypic.com) that allow you to share photos that they will automatically delete after 7 days - so it's unlikely your employer would find it.