Aug 26
Social Networking and its role in employment
The attempts in ensuring the character and capabilities of a future employee are many. Background checks and other means of confirming the integrity of a prospective employee is now taken to the online world.
Apparently there are a good number of employers who go as far as checking on employees’ lives though their profiles in social networking websites. A survey conducted by vault.com reveals that nearly half (44% to be exact) of all employers resort to examining social networking profiles of potential employees.
What these employers would like to do is to try to know a little bit more on the person that they plan on employing. At times, they may find out that the potential employee have questionable attitudes or behaviors which may pose as a threat or a liability to the company in the long run. According to the same survey, the decision of 82% of employers who are doing this online checking will most probably be affected by what they find.
On the other hand, 39% of those interviewed have also been viewing social networking profiles of current employees in their company. The reason behind this is quite apparent; the overall feel of the profile’s layout can give some ideas on the inner attitude of that employee.
The results presented thus far are more on the employer’s side. However, the same survey had its own parts for the employees of a company.
Apparently many employees are also aware of this “checking” being conducted on them after a job interview. Employees can take certain security measures to ensure anonymity or to build themselves up should an audit be performed. Employees can take precautions such as adjusting the privacy settings on their profiles. A common step here is to enable only first-degree friends to view a person’s profile. Others can resort to editing their profiles shortly before actually stepping out to look for a job.
People who are already employed are also pretty aware that their social networking profiles may be viewed by their boss sooner or later. A good 75% out of all employees surveyed have attested to this. Thus, they make use of the same tactics to make sure that their bosses refrain from doing what they call “creepy boss checks”.
Due to this, it can be possible, therefore, that many applicants will be turned down simply due to wrong words placed in their social network profiles. An employer can go ahead and view a social network profile, however it should not be a significant deciding factor. Employers should only go as far as viewing profiles of future employees, instead of going a little bit further by checking his or her personal messages. Employees on the other hand should be careful to make comments or statements which are more cliché rather than descriptive of who they really are.
