There’s no crying in job hunting!
Social media is the new vogue. It’s everywhere. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and a host of other services have created a phenomenon that has allowed people to share, link-up, and learn more about each other’s likes, dislikes, and habits than ever before. HR – recruiters especially – have begun to utilize social media to find candidates, and conversely, candidates are using social media to find job opportunities.
Honestly, social media is one facet of technology that I don’t think I’ve seen so widely – and quickly – embraced since Internet access became easily available to consumers, or maybe the iPod. Like any technology, though, you have to use it right to get what you want out of it.
What to share?
Some folks have made the case that people over-expose. I argue differently: it’s not that we over-expose, we just expose the wrong things. It’s no secret that the job market presently sucks. You know it, I know it, recruiters know it… you get the idea. But when you spend all of your status updates on complaining about life circumstances, you’re ruining yourself.
I’ve said this in a couple places (most recently here), but now is the right time to show employers what you’re made of. I truly believe that resilience is one of the best qualities you can have. Social media is, in essence, a way to share who you are with a broader audience. So here’s a question: do you want to share your best, or your worst, with your online audience?
I’m not terribly old, so I’m still friends (Facebook and otherwise) with a lot of graduating college seniors, and I see many of them falling into the wrong exposure trap. Too many statuses about disappointment not getting a job, complaining about the part-time work that they don’t like, paying back loans, and the list goes on. I get it. Life sucks sometimes. Get used to it.
Change how you share
You can’t change the unpredictability of life, but you can change how you respond. Instead of a status of “omg loans due… how am i going to pay? :(“, frame it this way: “Loan bill came in. Ouch! Looking into how I can start getting this debt paid off.”
Those two sentences are saying the exact same thing: loans are due and now you’ve got to pay them, and paying them is tough. But in Sentence 1, it’s a resignation, and you’re unsure of what to do; Sentence 2 says you’re taking ownership of what’s come your way and you’re taking steps to deal with it.
So to bring this all together in one, succinct paragraph:
Social media is a gateway to share who and what you are with the world. This includes all of the skills, abilities, and talent you can bring into an organization. But a great employee is more than just what they can do; it’s who s/he is. You have to show employers/recruiters that what you can do AND who are is the right fit for their organization.
February 3rd, 2010 at 12:12 pm
Great post. My comment is probably going to be long because I’ve been thinking about these issues a lot lately…I’m teaching 2 classes on Recruitment/Selection this semester.
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! :)
February 3rd, 2010 at 2:02 pm
Thanks for stopping by, Sarah!
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.
February 3rd, 2010 at 2:52 pm
Great post and wonderful response by Sarah. I agree with this completely. I loved the example of showing a page in class. Fantastic.
February 3rd, 2010 at 3:43 pm
Thanks for stopping by, Brian! I agree, the professor using live examples is great. I also thinks it helps reinforce that college professors aren’t out-moded academicians.
February 3rd, 2010 at 7:22 pm
Thanks Brian! :) And, Jon, thanks for the Brazen Careerist link-looks like a great site. I agree that Facebook’s privacy settings are annoying, but if you spend enough time, you can figure out how to keep most things private…not the fan pages though (stupid).
Keep the posts coming! I always enjoy them even if I don’t always comment.
February 4th, 2010 at 9:45 pm
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February 9th, 2010 at 10:27 am
Another new site geared toward the Gen Y group is http://koda.us/ – they appear to be like brazen careerist but without a blog or asides. It too shows the plus professional side of the newly graduated to potential employers. Its a nice site but nothing new at least to me. I personally don’t like BC. And as a recruiter I would never go to FB to check on a candidate. It is an invasion of privacy and unnecessary personal information even though I caution folks not to have anything embarrassing up just in case. That is what background checks are for in the pre-employment screening process, use those instead.
February 9th, 2010 at 5:38 pm
Thanks for the comment, Mischa! You bring up great points regarding the legality of social media – just how much is too much? Since Facebook is personal, it can reveal certain characteristics about a person (race, gender, etc.) that should not be included in the candidate file as they are presented to hiring managers.