I believe we all have heard or experienced how social media affecting the recruitment process. Sometimes in Facebook or similar social media we don't want to put our 'embarassing' picture from a party or something similar, because these pictures might affect our recruitment later. Its not just a picture, but also in posting or tweeting something inappropriate. Based from a 2012 survey, it demonstrate that your social media profile could break or make your chances of being hired.
A survey conducted by Eurocom Worldwide in 2012 found that almost one in five technologies industry executives not hiring some person because of the candidate's social media profile. I found this fact to be ridiculous, their social life won't be affecting their work capability, but it may affect the company reputation if one of their employees do something inappropriate. Aside from this, there are some recommendations based from Forbes article on how to build a positive social media profile and avoid being rejected by a potential employer.
1. Facebook: Follow the old saying about not posting anything in your profile that would make you embarrassed. Don't use Facebook as your canvas to vent everything you hate about life, your job, someone else, or a company. Some people recommend to create a separate personal profiles and professional profiles, so you can manage it, even though so, recruiter can simply look out for your name in Facebook anyway. Other way is to have 2 names, 1 for work 1 for personal life which is ridiculous. Best way is to keep it low profile posting and make some of your photos or album become private only where anyone else cant look at it.
2. LinkedIn: LinkedIn is better for job seekers than Facebook because you can create a professional profile by using it as an electronic resume. This include writing a profile summary, current job info, past job experience, education, awards, skills, and even obtaining testimonial from previous managers or direct reports. If you author a blog that relates to your work, include it in the url information as a plus point. Then you can encourage the potential employers to review your info on LinkedIn.
I am waiting for a few court cases where companies are sued for discriminating against job applicants on bases that are irrelevant to the job requirements. As you say above, what someone does in their own time shouldn't have any impact on how well they perform in a job, should it?
ReplyDeleteYes it would be very interesting if there is any court case about the discrimination. In my opinion discrimination has took another level by the social media. It should not affect their performance during work time, but nevertheless it may or may not affect the social reputation of the company. i.e. a director of a certain company do something embarrassing, it would affect the reputation of the company as well.
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