Job Seeker Has Net Loss

File this one under “Cyberspace screw-ups,” or maybe “the resume rebound.”

The Internet has quickly become an enormous employment clearinghouse, with vast job listings and resume pools. But David Vaughan, president of Dunhill Professional Search in Irvine, says job seekers who post resumes on the Net should be aware that their documents could end up in the hands of almost anyone--including their current employer.

A few months ago, Vaughan said, an engineer who had grown tired of his job at a large Orange County high-tech company decided to post his resume on one of the growing number of Internet resume pools. He underestimated just how widely his resume might circulate.

As it turned out, the employee’s own company was rounding up candidates for a job opening by searching the Net. One of the resumes they pulled belonged to their unlucky engineer.

As soon as they realized what they had stumbled into, company officials “called the employee in and let him go,” Vaughan said. “They thought it would be best if he conducted his job search full-time instead of part-time.”

The Internet is an increasingly powerful tool for job hunters, as well as recruiters like Vaughan. He uses the Net to get financial information about companies, to plan travel, and even to help potential recruits calculate cost-of-living differentials between cities.

But Vaughan says job seekers have to keep one thing in mind: “There is no confidentiality on the Internet.”

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Greg Miller covers high technology for The Times. He can be reached at (714) 966-7830 and at greg.miller@latimes.com