I have been participating in social networking for several years. I have an account with Facebook, Myspace, and the now outdated XuQa. For period of several months, I was addicted to scouring profiles and checking up on people. I started off creating a profile among these three sites that reflected the person I wanted to be. We all know that first impressions are critical, and whether or not social networking is the initial mode of contact, it's still important to make a good impression.
A majority of people try to create a profile that reflects how they want to be seen by other people. I know both types of people, people that perfectly reflect their personality and character in their profiles; and the type of people that fill their profiles with garbage and unnecessary clutter because they think it helps express themselves.
I think that anyone can manipulate their social networking profiles to fit whatever persona they see fit. Think about it, how many times have you learned something about someone from their Facebook profile? All you need to do is spend some time carefully creating the illusion and you can become anyone online.
I think the fact that employers sometimes check out a potential employee's Facebook is completely a dumb idea. You HAVE to know the person to get a true sense of their Facebook page. It is so incredibly easy to "forge" a profile. You can make yourself out to be whoever you want. Why should employers consider a Facebook profile credible material in making a hiring decision?
I think the level of control you have over your profile makes it extremely easy to show whatever side of yourself that you want. For example, you can show only your "Information" to unknown friends, only show photos to friends, or completely disable parts of your profile to everyone. The level of control makes it a great system. When people aren't smart enough or motivated enough to comb through their profile and make sure that it is set up in a professional manner, they are only hurting themselves.
I don't think there is any issue or problems whatsoever with social networking. I believe its up to the users to fix any problems they have with it; because quite frankly there is no excuse for people to have problems with such methods of communication.
I agree with you that employers making a character judgment on a potential employees based on their social network profiles can be potentially ridiculous. However, I do think sometimes it can be useful. I worked for a church for many years where kids applied to lead younger groups at summer camps and other events, however some of the kids would completely misrepresent themselves. I'm not saying that what was on their myspace was the real them, but one of the identities, either the applicant or the myspacer, was incongruent with the values we were looking for and so we were able to filter out potential problem leaders.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you about employees making judgements from a facebook profile. I actually know someone that was up for a job on campus and they didn't get the job because the employer said they didn't like their facebook page. Employers could be losing a beneficial employee because of something they saw on their facebook, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't have been a great choice for the job.
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