The interviewer leant across the table. "Didn't you Google Sir Alan?" he asked, incredulously.

Tre Azam, the impudent, long-faced candidate on The Apprentice, the popular BBC television show adapted from the US version fronted by Donald Trump, suddenly looked defeated. "No, I didn't," he admitted. "Not as such."

Over 11 episodes Tre had succeeded at tasks such as selling sexy photographs of fish and designing products for dogs, but on week 11 he failed the most basic rule of job interviews and was fired.

In reality, as well as on reality television, Googling has become such a commonplace part of hiring (and firing) that anyone who doesn't do it is either complacent, foolish or both. Keen candidates not only Google their prospective employer, but they also Google themselves - to see what the other side will have unearthed.

All this Googling can be a time-consuming and unrewarding business. I've just Googled Sir Alan and found out many things I knew already. I've waded through scores of blogs and discovered nothing much. The only revelation was that, for just $71 (€53), you can buy a desk toy in his image that says "you're fired" at the touch of a button.

I've also Googled myself, which was more disheartening. I found a few links to past articles and some biographical details. There were disappointingly few mentions of me on other people's blogs, but this may have been just as well.

"Lucy Kellaway fundamentally doesn't understand human relationships," said one. And another: "I hate Lucy Kellaway with a wild, unholy passion."

In neither investigation did I stumble on any embarrassing secrets. I can't speak for Sir Alan, but in my case that may be because I committed most of my misdemeanours before the internet was invented.

For almost everyone under 25, this is not the case. The internet is riddled with steamy details of their sex lives, drug habits, political views and so on. Students may love sharing secrets now; the question is whether they will want to be quite so open with future employers.

In the latest Harvard Business Review (HBR)there is a case study of a 30-year-old American woman interviewed for a job to open a store in China. She seems just the thing, until someone in human resources Googles her and finds she was involved in protests against the World Trade Organisation and China's human rights record eight years earlier.

Should she be hired? Four experts were asked by HBR. Two said yes, two said no.

It is tempting to conclude that mass Googling has made things worse for everyone in the job market. For employees, it means no privacy and no escape from the embarrassments of the past. For employers, it means worrying, not just about their own reputations, but about the reputation of every person they hire.

Worst of all, it means the wrong people get the jobs.

Suppose a company finds something dodgy on the internet about a candidate. The obvious thing would be to confront them about it in an interview.

Few companies dare do this for fear of being sued for discrimination. Instead, they hire someone who looks cleaner. This risk-averse policy is a shame: people with colourful pasts may turn out to be profitably colourful employees.

Such caution cannot last. Soon the teenagers who are blogging in their millions about their drunken exploits will join the job market, and companies refusing to take them will find it hard to find any recruits at all.

Eventually, companies will calm down because they will have no choice. In a decade, most new hires will have something embarrassing about them on the web, but so too will the new generation of HR managers.

In 20 years, there will even be pictures on the internet of chief executives as drunk, half-naked teenagers dancing on tables.

In this new world-without-secrets there will be grounds for cheer. It will be much harder to lie, for example. When everyone looks up everyone's CV, fantasy qualifications will be hard to sustain.

A more unexpected effect is that it could make executives' private lives more private. When we can see photos of almost everyone misbehaving in the past, we'll stop the pretend outrage over revelations in the present.

The only people who will make us wonder will be another category of deviants: those who appear to be spotlessly clean.