You're read on-line or news print about what not to do or share in the social media sites such as Facebook. The argument goes that more "freaks" are out there that will track you down or future employers might use this against you.
While common sense needs to be used of not telling everyone your house is empty and share your address with everyone, it's no difference than telling one of your friends over the phone that info & he/she share it with others!
Killers & Molesters have existed before the internet age and will continue to be there just like cockroaches, hard to kill them but can protect yourself from their "invasion". The internet what it did is moved the info at the speed of light "latterly" since electrons move that fast. So these days we hear about bad news faster & more of it because of the shrinking factor the web produces in bringing far away cities together virtually. Just like the automobile shrank the distance between US cities.
So again the internet is just an extension of technological advancement that might scare us, this how people thought when they went from communicating via Telex or snail mail to calling someone across the US, or idea of carrying your phone with you all the time with embedded tracking device in it. Yes all new phones come with GPS enabled, so your whereabouts are known. How is this any difference from telling your friends online you are not home? Criminals have means of knowing your whereabouts if they know your cell number & we share that with people none stop! I do understand that the web is making it easier for criminal of low IQ to rub you if he/she knows your home is free, at the same token can we really protect everyone from their own foolish behaviors? You choose online posting to share it with friends and family members and you can with tools provided block others. We can't police people from themselves! Or can we?
Now let us tackle the employee question regarding a person social presence online. Can it really harm future employment; we have read all so called experts that the answer is yes. In my opinion it's the opposite, I see it as a reference check where it can enhance your employment outlook and employers getting insight on who might fit well within their organization.
Let me explain after those numbers below:
1) There are 80 Million gen Y in the USA alone (born between 1982-1995) that grow up with Myspace, Facebook, youtube, LinkedIn etc, with penetration rate of 90% in this media.
2) There are 100 million users on Myspace, 500+ million on Facebook, 75 Million on LinkedIn, 48 Million on youtube and 100 Million on Twitter.
This current Gen Y has entered the job market and will be fully ingrained in the market by year 2017, when the last person born in 1995 will be working (hopefully). This is the generation that was raised during the information age era; to them the information superhighway is part of their culture just like their parents thought of the telephone or cars. This generation uses less of Landline phones than their parents did, why? The information superhighway provided other means of communications to them, such as Skype, texting, IM, etc.
When this generation has control of the job market future hiring managers from Gen Y will utilize the social media as a resume to look for candidates. Unlike today's managers who would look at the negative signs of why not to hire that person. Social media can shed light on how future team members can fit in your organization just by comparing his/her various on-line profiles with your current employees online presence (using set of mathematical rules) to find if the person is a match in your organization or opposite (depending on your hiring preference) to me this is no difference than having an organization hire a physiologist to evaluate a candidate before an offer is made (this has happened to me years ago before joining a company) . So let us say two people apply for a journalist position, both graduated from Ohio University well known Journalism school. But one of them has simple Facebook profile, with few updates on it. The other, has active profile, used Youtube to generate his everyday news and utilized various social media for his writing skills. Who do you think should be hired? Think of this as an internship without actually having to go to work at a company.
Another example, we hear this person should not post their party life as it might affect their career. The flip side is this person career taking him to be in wedding business, or event planner!
I hope I made appoint of how you can extrapolate additional information from each person on-line presence to be useful in the hiring process, why would I discount a person that "showed his party days in college" while at the same time we have had the last three US presidents admitting to smoke weed? How is that any different from showing "party pictures".
YES we can argue its not professional but on whose eyes?
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