Hiring managers are using social media to uncover the good and the bad from candidates' posts.

The work world is flocking to social media now more than ever—according to a new survey by Harris Poll on behalf of CareerBuilder, the percentage of employers that use social networking sites to research job candidates has skyrocketed. When the first survey was conducted in 2006, 11 percent of employers used social networks during research. This year, that number is 60 percent, marking a 500 percent increase in a decade.

Plenty of online interaction happens behind "closed doors," so to speak—or protected accounts. According to the survey, 36 percent of employers who screen via social networks have asked to "friend" or follow candidates' private accounts. Of those, 68 percent have been confirmed. However, that percentage is down from 80 percent last year.

"Social media has created a whole new set of etiquette rules that are tricky to navigate, but we're seeing employees take control and maintain ambiguity in their social relationships when it comes to work-related requests," says Ladan Nikravan, corporate communications manager at CareerBuilder.

Often, the reason for digging into a job candidate's online presence doesn't come from a place of malice. According to the survey, 60 percent of employers who use social media for research are "looking for information that supports their qualifications for the job." Yet 21 percent say that they're looking for reasons specifically not to hire the candidate.

Whatever they're looking for, employers end up finding information that causes them not to make a hire 48 percent of the time.

However, 32 percent of employers found information that caused them to hire a candidate. The things that tipped the scales most often were background information that supported the job qualifications and a personal website that conveyed a professional image.