Natalie Barletta – Special to the Southern News
They say that in finding a good job, connections can play a huge role of finding it. It’s not only about what you know, it can be argued also by saying that it’s who you know. Chances are with most of the connections that you make will end up being online as well as personal.
Your social network profile is an easy and free way to present yourself. If you look on your Facebook, you usually see the basics such as where you go to school, what you’re studying, and the jobs that you have held or currently are holding. It also shows your interests, and you in a more relaxed setting than a job interview.
It is no secret that employers look onto social networking sites such as Twitter, and Facebook to look up their prospective employees. According to the Huffington Post, 37% of employers use Facebook to screen future applicants, and over 65% of employers use Facebook as a primary resource. Out of the companies that were surveyed, 11 percent were going to use social networking as a site in the future.
With that in mind, we have to really think about the persona that we present online. That picture of you drunk with friends one weekend? Chances are future employers don’t like to see that in prospective employees.
We have become a society that’s basically obsessed with a world that is more virtual than actual. When we take a picture of ourselves and we like it, then we will post that image online. It’s become habitual that we check our social networking feed multiple times a day. It’s more convenient for smartphone and tablet owners, because they don’t have to even log into a computer. They can check it on a moment’s notice, since the device in question is in your pocket. With this kind of access, the days of waiting to get home to post that picture of you and your friends is over. Before the invention of the smartphone, you had to wait before you can post your content. That gave you plenty of time to contemplate whether or not you should post that picture. Now that’s a thing of the past. You can upload the image as soon as you take it. That might not be a good thing, because having that time between posting may be a good idea. Then you can think of all of the effects before you post whatever you post.
What are some things that employers look for when reviewing profiles? They look for things that are inappropriate, such as sexual content and nudity. They also look for things that don’t match with the resume that you present to them. That means if you lied on your resume saying that you went to a completely different college than you actually went to, than that could be a problem.
On our Facebook profile, it allows us to present ourselves in a favorable light. However, one can say that Facebook is one side of our lives. What we put on our online profiles shouldn’t affect how we are treated in real life. Sadly, that’s the not the case. In the 21st century, our virtual life has been bleeding into our actual life. It affects real relationships. It also affects us when we go into the workplace as well as our personal relationships.
