There are many ways that Social Networking could and has been used in both corporate and everyday life that benefit society. A very important option is the use of LinkedIn. Instead of the traditional method of the candidate coming to the employer, LinkedIn has allowed the employer to come to the candidate. Users of LinkedIn can create their profiles, and enter certain keywords so that they may be found by recruiters. For example,recruited Maureen Crawford-Hentz has offered many jobs based on LinkedIn profiles.
She stated, "I ended up looking for consumer product marketing," Crawford-Hentz
says. "And I hit upon his profile, and I sent him this e-mail saying:
'Hi, Alfred, I found your profile on line. And we have a position that I
think may be of interest to you.'"
This is a clear indication that the use of social networking is very powerful in all aspects of life. However there is a dark side that many people are unaware of that pertains to the privacy portion of using these websites. When people use social networking sites frequently, such as Facebook and Twitter, they are creating a digital fingerprint in their name, and many hardly take this into account. Lance Hoffman, a computer science professor stated that " by giving up such
information as their name, birth date, and a list of their network of
friends, users are revealing far more than they know" What Hoffman is alluding to is that many applications "steal" that information everytime we use the site and piece it together like a puzzle, until they have enough information to steal someone's identity. This is the reason that social netoworking sites have recently increased the level of privacy to offer users, although some argue there is never enough.
Facebook can also be detrimental to the job search. Employers are more and more everyday using Facebook to screen potential employees. They are able to access a potential candidates whole life in certain scenarios if specific settings are not in place, and this can thwart them from getting a job. In the future, I strongly believe privacy will play even a bigger role in how these social networking sites are used. I know the goal for some social networking sites, specifically Facebook is to encompass a persons online experience. Facebook will definitely continue to grow, but there will be many issues regarding how they store and use the users data. The very useful professional networking sites, such as LinkedIn will continue to have a growing impact on how employers are recruited, as time passes and computer interaction becomes more prominent.
Overall while social networking is becoming a key tool in getting jobs, on LinkedIn, it may be detrimental to one if they do not update there privacy settings. Outside of the corporate world, I think users should be careful about how much and what information is hosted online as puzzle pieces are added to our digital fingerprint.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6522523&sc=emaf
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2262
very good point about our privacy that we post on the media and how important is to determined how much is to much on the information that provide to the social media network.
ReplyDeleteYeah I forgot to mention the job screening process on my blog. Employers definitely use that when they can and this is why quite a few of my friends have purposely written their last names different and given different emails on their resumes so that they can't be found on facebook and after all do we really want our potential employers to be looking at our profiles behind our backs? However, there is a point to be made, that even though people don't realize their digital footprint; they should realize that they are making one and if employers find them on facebook, they should expect it.
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