In a virtual world flooded with social networking, employers have become the wiser. There is a strong chance that at your next interview, you could be asked to be your future employer's "friend" on Facebook. How can you make sure your Friday night party pics are safely tucked away from the public realm?

Nick O'Neill, founder of SocialTimes and AllFacebook.com, has posted to his blog "10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know," outlining basic steps that help make your profile more conservative and transform your social site into a professional profile.

O'Neill pointed out that if an employer is curious, he is going to look up all that he can about a potential employee. "In a professional workplace, you don't want to compromise the integrity of the company," O'Neill said. Here are his 10 tips:

Use your friend lists. Create categories -- Friends, Family, Professional -- where you can organize the people you're connected to. O'Neill shows how this is done and emphasizes that each group can have specific privacy settings applied to them.

Remove yourself from Facebook search results. This means people who aren't your friends can be blocked from searching for you within Facebook.

Remove yourself from Google. You can block the public out, too, by customizing your profile to prevent the public from using search engines to find you.

Avoid the infamous photo/video tag mistake. This little tip can prevent a potential employer from finding those compromising photographs your friend took last weekend. This step is important in the shift from a social profile to a more professional profile and could very well be a determining factor in whether you get the job.

Protect your albums. This tip goes along the same lines as tagged photos. This helps you manually set who can see what in each of your albums.

Prevent stories from showing up in your friends' news feeds. This tip prevents the news of a recent breakup from reaching the eyes of your new colleagues, along with other stories you might have told one of your friends online.

Protect against published application stories. O'Neill suggests you check up on your profile view after adding any applications. Some applications could compromise your credibility and should not be for public viewing. Be particularly careful with the popular "Graffiti," which allows friends to draw on your wall.

Make your contact info private. This step helps keep your e-mail and phone number from getting into the wrong hands. You can pick and choose who can call you or e-mail you, which could be helpful when deciding how accessible you want to be at your new job.

Avoid embarrassing wall posts. Ask your friends to keep it clean. Enough said. Some people use Facebook for business, some use it for pleasure. Be sure to adjust the settings to limit who can view and post to your wall.

Keep your friendships private. This setting is for the people you are connected to. You can protect their identity by preventing access to their personal pages.

For more information, go to www.allfacebook.com/2009/02/facebook-privacy/.