With social media on the rise where someone can post pictures and communicate with others, it has its good and bad points. I don’t really follow all the social media but the only account I have is facebook. There are quite a few other social media sites out there as well like instagram, twitter and myspace, just name a main ones, that do things in there own way. The only media site that definitely differs from the rest of them to my belief is linkedin and that is because its more a website that focuses more on professional work. With Linkedin, I have posted a resume and other data about myself on it and have seen the views and even had feedback from a few companies that viewed my resume from it. Over time I got to know that some, if not all companies look to these websites to find any kind of information on there candidates. What I found interesting was what were some of the things they companies were looking for that could of determined whether you were a possible candidate or another resume to be tossed out.
One I noticed was in the article, “Employers scour Web for details on applicants,” where they mentioned that recruiters are looking at Linkedin accounts to for “consistency in dates, titles, education as listed on a resume as well as see if there are recommendations posted and read them to see who wrote them in the employment hierarchy. . . . we might check a Twitter stream to see if a candidate posted his or her impressions on an interview,” mentioned by Jason Banks, VP, which meant to me is that companies are paying attention to posts so that there isn’t any fraudulent acts or wrongful discussions of the company from the candidates. Not many people are aware of the damage that some of these social media sites can cause because they believe that once there data is private and there settings are setup that only there friends and family have access to it, they are safe. I believe that if the government can see everything that is being posted on them, there has to be a way for some of these enterprises and corporate companies to be granted access to these sites.
There were some good things I also recognized in some of the articles example, “Colleges Pay to Protect Students from Toxic Google Results,” which talks about how some of the schools are trying to find ways for students to bring a positive outlook on the media sites. Added to that, two schools which were Syracuse University and Johns Hopkins University as well as others were participating in a service called BrandYourself.com, an online-reputation tool that focused on helping students scrub and shine their Google results, which to me would be a good assisting tool. I believe that once someone has the qualities of being professional, that individual is going to succeed and with that being said, what this university did for its students in the article on “College Advises Students: Ditch the Selfies.” they demonstrated the purpose of making there profiles look professional and even offering professional pictures in the event a company was to view it whether it be on facebook, twitter or Linkedin, which could help them land a great job in the future.
When I looked up my name in google, the only place that showed it was on Linkedin. I am shocked to know that when it came to my name, they showed a lot of females and a few males from different states that appeared on facebook and twitter which meant to me that I haven’t broadcast myself. I do believe if that if a company was interested in your skills, they are going to do all the background research they can do on you and in some way but not all, it can affect the decision on if you will be given an opportunity or not for a job but as long as we pay attention to the things we post on these sites and adjust it to be a bit more professional, we stand a chance of having jobs. Technology is changing and is making it better for companies to have a little insight on there candidates because things like blogs and forums are assisting to help demonstrate what we as individuals can bring to the table for that special job, whether it be powerpoints or web designs, it all helps overall, as stated in the article “Online Identity & Networking for Academics.” Overall, it may seem that companies are trying to look into our private lives to find ways of not giving us the opportunities based on profiles and connections but I think if the companies met face to face and have conversations, they can tell the difference about that person.
References:
http://blogs.wsj.com/atwork/2014/03/27/college-advises-students-ditch-the-selfies/
http://blogs.wsj.com/atwork/2012/12/17/colleges-pay-to-protect-students-from-toxic-google-results/
http://www.newsday.com/classifieds/jobs/employers-scour-web-for-details-on-applicants-1.2133284
http://www.job-hunt.org/job-search-for-academics/online-identity-networking-academics.shtml
