Posts tagged with 'identity'

How I stopped worrying about job searches and learned to love social networks

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iStock_000004755197XSmallOver on FastCompany, there’s a blog post covering a report about employers’ checking out of candidates on Facebook, and the news ain’t lookin’ pretty from the headline: “If You’re Applying for a Job, Censor Your Facebook Page.” The crux of the study says that 45% of employers have rejected job candidates based on what they found on social networks. (Which also means, by the way, that 55% haven’t rejected candidates based on what they found. More than half.)

This is probably most unemployed people’s worst nightmares, especially given the scarcity of jobs within certain industries and overall economic climate. I can get denied because I had a couple of drinks with friends on Saturday night? Here’s the breakdown of what can evidently keep you from getting hired:

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Identity crisis: How much should I share on social media?

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equalizerAs more people are jumping into the social media river, many are wondering what they should share online — specifically, where are the boundaries between personal and professional behavior in this brave new world, where we’re all able to peek into the windows of our friends, family and coworkers.

I talked in pretty simple terms about some different approaches in “The non-fanatical beginner’s guide to Twitter.” With this post, I’m going to flesh out some of the nitty gritty and help to answer some of the tougher questions.

It used to be said with one of the very first popular online social tools — email — that you shouldn’t write anything in a message that you wouldn’t want to appear in the New York Times. Few people ever followed that rule, thank goodness. How boring would our lives be if we all subjected ourselves to Grey Lady standards of information sharing?

Nowadays, new tools make it easier to share as much of ourselves as we want, and especially if you’re just getting going, it can be difficult to know what’s okay to post and what isn’t. A flat-out easy beginner’s guidepost comes from the illustrious Susan Mernit, who told participants in a workshop we led: “If you’re wondering whether you should post something or not, you probably shouldn’t.”

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