Anybody who has ever had fun knows that drunken pranks need to be captured on camera and posted on the internet for posterity. Equally, anyone who plans to get a job knows that such photographs cannot be in any way linked with his or her name – Google-happy recruiters might not fall into the “has ever had fun” category, after all.

So, is it feasible to have one internet personality for professional purposes and another that is strictly for social occasions? Well, yes, but there are some caveats attached. Colin Tenwick, the chief executive of StepStone, a talent management company, says that some people are beginning to take this dual approach to their online lives. “It’s relatively easy to have two personas because there are relatively few checks and balances,” he says. Thus it would be perfectly possible for me to have a professional profile on, say, LinkedIn under my real name and a Face-book profile or personal blog hidden by a nickname that only my friends know.

But my nickname might not hide me for long. Tenwick predicts that recruiters and others will soon be able to link all these profiles to one user. “It’s about the connection points. If there are any connections, by friends or employers . . . you will start to see correlations coming through. Ultimately you will be able to link these things. It’s not being done fully now but it will be.”

Karl Gregory, the marketing director of iProfile, an online CV company, has taken a slightly different approach. He has multiple online profiles, each tailored to a particular audience, and directs contacts to whichever is most appropriate. His professional profiles are public but, rather than using a false name for his social profiles, he simply uses the sites’ security settings to ensure that only invited friends can access the pages.

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“The balance gets tricky when you have colleagues who are also good friends,” he says. “I keep them quite strictly separate – colleagues on one, friends on another – but it’s not always 100 per cent. You do have some crossover.” Multiple profiles mean multiple updating sessions; head-hunters and others scanning your professional information aren’t likely to be impressed by out-of-date skills. iProfile is working on a way for people to update one online CV that will then update all linked profiles. It’s already possible to send updated CVs to a range of selected contacts. “It gives you more control over who sees what,” Gregory says.

It’s not just individuals who want this control. Some companies are banning staff from accessing sites such as LinkedIn at work, not because people will fritter away valuable work time trying to decide who to poke, but because such sites are frequented by recruiters looking for fresh talent, Tenwick says.

But Clint Heiden, the chief executive of VisualCV, an online résumé site, thinks that companies that do this are missing a trick: staff profiles can be online business cards as well as online CVs. “My public CV spends most of its time working as a business development tool,” he says.

“Aren’t we all trying to convey two things in our job? When I deal with professionals, say at a large well-known company, I want to know about the company and about the person. The first thing [an online profile] does is promote the employer.” Many professionals are not on their company’s website, meaning that potential clients can find out about them only through other sites. “It allows someone to brand themselves while also getting that great deal for the company.”

Despite this it is fair to say that many people create online profiles with half an eye on job opportunities. If this is what you have in mind, keep the detailed version relatively private. A public profile can act as a shop front; allow people further access only if you know you want them to have that information. Otherwise, while they might not see pictures of you doing the limbo in Ibiza, naked, they will still get plenty of other private details.

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