Facebook[/caption]Carol Forsloff - Think that smart remark directed against another individual or business sounds cute on Facebook? A potential employer might not, as it is now being found prospective employers review social media sites and may not hire you if they find something they don’t like.
Eurocom Worldwide recently conducted a survey in conjunction with a public relations agency and found that one in five technology firms report not hiring someone because they didn’t like the candidate’s social media profile. That’s after learning that more than 40% of these prospective employers check the potential employee’s profile on social media sites such as Facebook.
That Big Brother watching you might be that business owner/manager you had hoped to impress.
As for those who disclose nothing or next to nothing on the page, employers look askance at that too. Reasonable and necessary privacy settings are one thing but not revealing much at all raises suspicions about what else an individual might be hiding as well. So it is the proper balance employers seek or that special something they find lacking or disagreeable that can cause an applicant to be rejected from a possible job.
“The 21st century human is learning that every action leaves an indelible digital trail. In the years ahead many of us will be challenged by what we are making public in various social forums today. The fact that one in five applicants disqualify themselves from an interview because of content in the social media sphere is a warning to job seekers and a true indicator of the digital reality we now live in,” warns Mads Christensen, Network Director at Eurocom Worldwide.
The percentage of employers using social media to assess employee and potential employee behavior continues to increase, even as social networking itself increases in the marketplace. In 2009 CareerBuilder, a major resource of job information, did a survey of social networking sites and found an increase from twenty-two percent to forty-five percent of employers using these sites for screening.
Posting content , picture or text, about drinking or drugs, bad-mouthing other employers, making discriminatory comments or showing poor communication skills are the red flags noted by potential employers in their rejection of job applicants.
While legal scholars emphasize that companies who use social media for job screening must be especially cautious not to intrude too recklessly in areas of privacy, Huma Rashid underlines the potential candidate’s responsibilities as well with this: “And for employees, words of caution don’t seem to resonate but always bear repeating: do not put anything up online that you do not want prospective employees to see.”
