How Social Networking Can Kill Your Future
Everyday, there are millions of people who apply for jobs at various locations. What those millions do not realize is that their cyber social life may cost them the dream job that they have been looking for.
(The College Online) One 2006 graduate, who preferred to remain anonymous, was turned down for a summer job based on the contents of her MySpace page.
Doing background checks is nothing new. Employers have always done some kind of digging into potential employees’€™ pasts, even if it was just a Google search. Now employers are becoming wiser and have begun using social networking and blogging sites in addition to more traditional background checks.
Cyberspace is a great place to post your thoughts, communicate your fears and even find the next girl/guy. Unfortunately in our day and age, putting your thoughts online may cost you your next career, so unless you look forward to working at McDonalds for the next twenty years, you may want to censor what you put online.
Or work for yourself so no-one has to chuck away your CV :)
Honestly! I find this whole brouhaha over the impact of social networking on career prospects to be more ludicrous than the brouhaha over sexual predators on MySpace. Yes, employers Google you. Yes, they look at your MySpace. But they’re going to need to learn to keep people’s shenanigans in context!. Social networking can’t kill your career, using poor judgment (i.e. posting photos of yourself doing something illegal) on social networking sites can.
We’ve been having a great conversation about this over at the Blog Business Summit (see link above). We’d love to have you join the debate. Pay special attention to the posts entitled “A Guide to Interpreting a Potential Employee’s Social Networking Profile” and “Responses to Yesterday’s Social Networking Post.”