This post was mentioned on Twitter by jon_hyland: Join the discussion: is Facebook really professional? http://bit.ly/cRmmH6...

Keep the posts coming! I always enjoy them even if I don’t always comment.

I completely agree with your points. Students can also check out Brazen Careerist (http://www.brazencareerist.com) for a LinkedIn-type site geared more towards 20-somethings and Gen Y folks.

Facebook has fairly shoddy privacy controls. They aren’t clear, and to top it off, you can’t completely control everything in your profile. For example, I just can’t seem to get the ‘Pages’ I’m a fan of off of the initial profile that non-friends see. I think that with hours of tweaking and with the right applications, you can make your Facebook profile a more professional page. Like you’ve pointed out, though, Facebook wasn’t designed to be a professional networking and it’s very difficult (if not impossible) to control the content that other ‘Friends’ post about you.

I’ve used Facebook to connect with a couple of people I’ve met on more professional terms, but I haven’t really pushed my personal profile much. I’ve been using my The Method of Madness fan page to connect with more people, which provides a far more reduced view of information about me.

I know employers use social media sites, but I really do believe that certain sites, like linkedin, are more appropriate for professional purposes, and other sites, like facebook, should never be viewable by the general public. Some information is best kept away from the prying eyes of potential employers…like pretty much every piece of information that one might put on facebook.

One problem with having a publicly viewable facebook page is that, although you can control what you post on it, you can’t control what others write/post on it (unless you don’t allow friends to post, but what’s the fun of that). Even if that embarrassing picture/comment that your friend posts is only up there for a few minutes, it could be problematic for you.

The other thing is that you can’t control what other people think about things that you might feel are totally innocuous. Some people are bothered by very random things. For example, I will admit to having a slight prejudice against people who play Farmville…I can’t help it! I just think it’s so stupid. Of course, it’s not going to have a serious impact on my view of that person, but it’s one little minor piece of negative information that might color my perception of them and lead me to make attributions about them that might be less favorable than another candidate. Or, using your example, maybe just the fact that someone has a lot of student loan debt might raise the eyebrows of a recruiter/employer if there’s a signing bonus for the job, for example (not that such a thing is common these days, I suppose). Is this person just after the bonus to pay off his/her mountains of debt but won’t stick around longer than is required? Even things like little spelling/grammar mistakes in a status update could reflect poorly on you.

So, instead of advising students to be cautious about what/how they post, I always advise them to keep their facebook pages as private as possible. I tell them to only let friends see their page, and to choose their friends somewhat carefully. And, of course, I remind them that even privacy settings are not a guarantee that what they post will remain private. They can/should still have a public social media/networking page of some sort that potential employers could see, but it should be something more like linkedin…strictly professionally-relevant information.

Btw, as an aside, one of my colleagues at UVM did an exercise in his class yesterday where he opened a few facebook pages of his students in front of the whole class (he had selected them prior to class). Of course they were embarrassed, but he did it to make the point that employers can (and DO) see all this info. Good lesson, I thought.

Wow, sorry that was so long…that means you made me think! :)