Thursday, September 27, 2012

A Helping Hand in Popularity Contests and in the Workforce


Five years ago, I made the decision to join the social network created by Mark Zuckerberg known as Facebook in order to understand what the commotion I was hearing from my friends was all about. I wasn’t new to the social network scene because I had a Myspace, but almost immediately after using Facebook, I got a feel of what the website entailed and I knew that it had a great amount of potential. More and more of my friends were following the bandwagon and signing up for their own Facebook and eventually, it was considered unusual for a person not to have any sort of affiliation with Facebook.
If someone were to come across my page, they would be able to see that I have 1,386 “friends” on Facebook. Out of that outrageous amount of friends I have, I probably only interact with about 100 of them. Not until recently did I come to the realization that it is completely unnecessary to accept a friend request if you are not familiar with the person or if you have no intentions of actually communicating with them. A few years back, it was somewhat of a contest to see how many friends everyone could get and who could get the most. In order to keep up I would send out friend requests at a frequent rate and accept almost any request that I received. Nowadays, my total number of friends only increases from the new people I meet at college.
The amount of interactions I have between a small fraction of my friends usually include wall posts to each other, sharing pictures, and maintaining groups that make it easy to communicate privately if desired. When I do decide to post things on Facebook, I always make sure that I pay close attention to the content of the post or picture so that I do not post anything inappropriate. Everyone should acquire this habit because according to a CareerBuilder survey, “37% of employers investigate job candidates’ social media profiles.” Browsing through a person’s Facebook is a good way for employers to get to know more about the new potential employee prior to making the ultimate decision of whether or not they believe the candidate is best for the certain position.
If I was an employer using Facebook as a way to hire new employees, I would hope to sense that the person is professional and mature based on how they display themselves to others on a public website. A prime example of someone I would not hire almost instantly after I reviewed their profile would be one of my close friends from high school, Taylor, who is 19 years old. Taylor’s profile picture is of her with her eyes closed holding up what appears to be her middle finger. Right off the bat, it’s apparent that she is unsophisticated and possibly intoxicated. By clicking the next button, her second profile picture appears which includes herself holding a glass bottle of alcohol. Not only is she underage, but she is also displaying that she is immature. After simply viewing these two profile pictures, without a doubt my decision would be made and I would not hire Taylor. The charts below show additional information concerning why employers look up possible new employees on social networks and what most of the outcomes are based on.

The statistics in the charts prove that Facebook can both help and hurt a candidate in the hiring process in many different ways. Although it may not seem fair for employers to make certain assumptions about people according to their Facebook page, you are the controller of what appears on your page and it is relatively easy to give yourself a positive image for anyone else to see.