Facebook – Keep it Professional

If you have an account on a social networking site like Facebook or Myspace, your life is an open book.  When it comes to a career standpoint, what you put on those sites can effect how you are portrayed as a professional.  I read an interesting fact on the Facebook blog, posted by Mark Zuckerberg:
“150 million people around the world are now actively using Facebook and almost half of them are using Facebook every day. This includes people in every continent—even Antarctica. If Facebook were a country, it would be the eighth most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan, Russia and Nigeria.”

With the growth and popularity of these sites do you need to separate your personal from professional life or can they all be combined as one?  BINC TV discusses why you should keep your profiles professional to a certain limit. 

I have read stories of potential employers and colleges looking at Facebook profiles of their applicants as a way to check their background.  Companies have even fired employees for having posted inappropriate things on their profiles.  It actually does happen; Virgin Atlantic fired 13 flight attendants for criticizing the airline’s flight safety standards and degrading their passengers. 

Heidi Sullivan of the Cision Blog offered 10 tips on how to avoid a professional embarrassment on Facebook:

1. Keep an eye on tagged photos. Both MySpace and Facebook give you the ability to untag yourself in photos -- even if someone else posted the photo. Though the photo may still be out there, employers will not be able to search for those photos of you.
2. Keep private comments private. MySpace, Facebook and Twitter all have the option to send private messages to your friends (on MySpace, use Messages, on Facebook, use your Inbox, and on Twitter, use Direct Messages). Don’t leave Comments on MySpace, Write on a Wall on Facebook or send a Tweet on Twitter if you don’t want others to see it.
3. If necessary, keep your page private. All of the sites mentioned above also have options for keeping your entire profile private, so if you can’t help but broadcast your latest exploits to all of your friends, isolate it to that: your friends.
4. Watch what others are saying. If someone leaves a comment that you wouldn’t want everyone to see, delete it. They won’t be offended, and if they are, just explain that you are keeping your page clean.
5. Check social networking sites often. If you neglect one of these sites, friends might be tagging you in photos that everyone shouldn’t see, writing about your nights out on the town or worse. Keep up-to-date on what they are saying and doing by logging in regularly. You can also set up email notifications to inform you when there’s activity on the page.
6. Don’t drunk network. In the days when all a partier had to worry about was drunk dialing, the embarrassment was isolated to those in your phone book. Signing on to social networking sites after a night of drinking can result in embarrassment in front of the whole world.
7. Don’t say anything negative about your employer, your company, your product or service. We all need to vent about our jobs sometime -- but keep those complaints private. Nothing will turn an employer off quicker than negative or insulting comments about the company.
8. Job seekers should have a professional email address.  If you have a ‘fun’ email address tied to your social networking page (like sexyguy23@gmail.com), don’t use that email address on your resume. In fact, don’t EVER use an email address like that on a resume. Create a professional email address for your job search.   That way, if your potential employer searches for your MySpace or Facebook page by your email address, they won’t find it.
9. Remember who your friends are. Many times we add friends to social networking sites who are coworkers, supervisors or others we have professional relationships with. Don’t forget that you’ve added those friends when you post comments or photos that you don’t want people at work to see.
10. Continue to be yourself. Employers understand that your personal page on a social networking site is just that: your personal page. While you don’t want photos or comments that would be unacceptable in the workplace, it is totally fine to have content that may be outside of how you normally behave at work.

So overall to avoid problems, do as Grant said in the video blog: follow the general rule of dinner table etiquette -- don’t talk about religion, politics, or sex.  Staying away from these topics will not give potential employers bait to judge you.  Since companies do use social networking as a background check method many times you make a first impression long before you even show up for the interview.  Why not make it a good one.

I would like to know what the readers views are on the use of Social Networking sites?

• Is it ethical for universities or employers to view your profile and make decisions about you before you ever meet in person?
• Should users keep two profiles, one for personal friends and one for professional purposes? 
• What is appropriate and inappropriate material to keep on your profile?

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