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.
2 comments:
Just like you, I suffered from social media’s popularity contest. I had this impulsive need to makes many friends, whether I knew them or not, in a short amount of time. Gradually my interaction on Facebook has decreased to just a few posts here and there. But the content that I do post is carefully thought out. Meghan Casserly describes in her article, Social Media and the Job Hunt: Squeaky-Clean Profiles Need Not Apply, that although it’s essential for potential employees to present themselves in a professional manner it’s just as important to show their personalities; there’s no need to be perfect. Employers want someone “that illustrates creativity, engagement in a community.” The ones with character, according to her, are hired. This idea sidetracks the popular notion that we must present an absolutely “clean” profile in order to receive employment, but this isn’t the case anymore. What are your thoughts on this?
While I do believe it is our job to control the way we portray ourselves online I feel that there is a block in the road. The block I am referring to is known as “Timeline”. As I’m sure you know, “Timeline” is the latest version of a Facebook users “profile” and was designed to provide your friends the ability to “flip through the pages of a ‘yearbook’ of your life”. Because of “Timeline” you can now look back to specific years and months and see pictures, posts and comments that you yourself might not even remember posting. What is worse is that even if you set your profile to limited, the information is still available on your friends “Timelines” and their friends “Timelines”. It seems that it is a never-ending cycle in which we can’t escape. To combat this, many Facebook users temporarily delete their accounts as to avoid rejection while looking for jobs. However, according to some employers and psychiatrists, not having a Facebook is an automatic red flag and seen as abnormal (http://bit.ly/V336lW). So where and how do we draw the line?
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