1 in 5 employers screen profiles

CareerBuilder.com recently conducted a survey of "more than 31,000 employers" and found that 22% of employers look at social-network profiles as they screen job candidates, ComputerWorld.com reports, and 9% said they plan to do so. That represents rapid growth in the practice, since only 11% of hiring managers said they screen with social sites in 2006. Of the 22% who said they do, one-third said they "found information on such sites that caused them to toss the candidate out of consideration for a job." Interestingly, that last percentage was exceed by that of hiring managers who found content in profiles that convinced them to hire the candidate (24%); these managers said what convinced them was "profiles showing a professional image and solid references can boost a candidate's chances for a job." Please see the article for the eight "top areas of concern" employers look for in social-network profiles.

1 in 5 employers screen profiles

CareerBuilder.com recently conducted a survey of "more than 31,000 employers" and found that 22% of employers look at social-network profiles as they screen job candidates, ComputerWorld.com reports, and 9% said they plan to do so. That represents rapid growth in the practice, since only 11% of hiring managers said they screen with social sites in 2006. Of the 22% who said they do, one-third said they "found information on such sites that caused them to toss the candidate out of consideration for a job." Interestingly, that last percentage was exceed by that of hiring managers who found content in profiles that convinced them to hire the candidate (24%); these managers said what convinced them was "profiles showing a professional image and solid references can boost a candidate's chances for a job." Please see the article for the eight "top areas of concern" employers look for in social-network profiles.

Party photos: MN teens suspended

More than a dozen students at a Minnesota high school were disciplined recently for party photos in a social site. They were suspended from sports and other extracurricular activities for allegedly posting photos in Facebook in which "they are either in the company of those consuming alcohol or holding alcohol themselves," KARE-TV reported. "The ACLU says there are concerns about schools mining through student profile pages but that what happened at Eden Prairie isn't a surprise." ACLU executive director Charles Samuelson told KARE that the students' rights weren't violated in this action because of the school's stated policy of zero tolerance for drug or alcohol consumption by students participating in sports or extra-curricular activities. If those students end up going to University of Minnesota-Duluth, social-networking-related policy goes a step further, KARE reports. UM-Duluth's athletic department "requires its student athletes to sign a statement saying they understand that if they choose to create a MySpace or Facebook profile, that profile is subject to review at any time, for any reason." The University of Minnesota is Facebook's second-largest network of users in the US, KARE adds.

Very public binge drinking

When CNN contacted a 22-year-old university business major about a video she posted of herself drunk she took it down, saying the interview request made her realize anyone could see it, CNN reports. She's a member of a Facebook group with more than 172,000 members called "Thirty Reasons Girls Should Call it a Night," which has a page linking to 5,000 photos of drunk college students - many of them extremely humiliating (CNN describes some of them). And many of the photos "are accompanied by full names and the colleges the women attend, apparently without much concern that parents, or potential employers, will take a look." I hope it doesn't take a call from a news reporter for it to occur to other group members that the images and videos they post could be harmful to future prospects! Forty percent of US college students binge drink, reports CNN, citing a 2007 report by the Center on Alcohol and Substance Abuse.

Teen privacy: New standards?

It seems self-exposure, or assertively forgoing privacy, is for teens "as natural as brushing their teeth," writes Janet Kornblum of USATODAY. They seek feedback on themselves constantly, Janet quotes one expert as saying. Another told her that teens understand privacy but simply choose to be "out there" because that's how things happen. It's about marketing. Or just staying in touch, which outweighs the potential downside (reputation issues). So they just develop a thicker skin and/or learn how to manage their public persona (see "Online spin control").

'The Naked Generation'?

"We are the Naked Generation," writes Caroline McCarthy of herself and her peers born in "1980-something." She blogs at CNET that - unlike Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie - "we didn't have 'socialite' already on our resumes, so we turned to the Web." It is "more than just our stage; it's our dressing room, our cocktail lounge and, most notably, our PR department." The Naked Generation, she adds, is smart and knows it, "so they think they can use online exhibition as an advantage rather than an embarrassment. The word to highlight there is 'think'." A lot of adults reflexively believe her - adults who don't understand the full scope of what's going on in MySpace, Facebook, Xanga, Bebo, and so many other blogging and social-networking sites. The problem with McCarthy's view and that expressed in a more academic article on online self-exposure - "Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism" - is that they generalize way too much, and they fuel parents' fears because they continue to fix our attention on only one aspect of the social Web. Despite her eye-catching phrase, McCarthy's not actually talking about a whole generation. She's talking about one group of social networkers and bloggers - those who, for whatever reason, are into self-exposure - and one aspect of Web 2.0. So is researcher Christine Rosen, when she asserts that "the creation and conspicuous consumption of intimate details and images of one’s own and others’ lives is the main activity in the online social networking world." Certainly there is over-self-exposure in social sites. Some users do use them as popularity contests, for self-marketing, and toying with lightweight "relationships." But to say those are basically what social networking's all about is a massive generalization. Social networking is whatever any user wants it to be. A profile or blog is a reflection of oneself, or whatever persona a user is projecting in a given moment. That can be good, bad, or anything in between, but it's very individual. For the bigger picture, see "25 perspectives on social networking," by Malene Charlotte Larsen, a PhD student in psychology and communications at Aalborg University in Denmark. [Readers, unlike most bloggers, I usually post stories as I find them without editorializing - I hope you don't mind that I was really being a blogger with this post - Anne.]

Professional & personal lives online

It's all getting kind of muddy online for grownups. For the pioneers of social networking - teenagers and 20-something just starting out their careers - it wasn't such a big deal. They didn't make the distinctions we make between "lives." They, especially teens, experimented with different persona, but that's just it. The persona were experimental, not established. Now that we adults are getting into social networking, and social sites are proliferating and specializing (or settling into niches), fortunately we have some choices: We can have our professional social networking, our extended-family social networking, our music social-networking, but we are also having social networking dilemmas. Take Washington Post tech reporter Rob Pegoraro's experience with Facebook, for example. For him, Facebook started out to be "purely recreational" and kind of solidified in his head as such. Then co-workers started friending him. Okaaaaay, he could maybe get used to that. But then p.r. people in his business circles but not personally known to him wanted to be "friends." Hmmm. The problem is, Facebook has become what you might call the hip LinkedIn.com (a "social-networking" site that has always been about professional networking), so plenty of people 30+ are now doing professional networking on it. Facebook does have "at least 135" privacy options. "Yet not one of these options allows you to categorize Facebook contacts as close or distant friends." It' getting a little tricky. See p. 2 of Rob's article for his conclusion.

The wrong kind of spin control

The term is "sock-puppeting," and its definition is "the act of creating a fake online identity to praise, defend or create the illusion of support for one’s self, allies or company," the New York Times reports. The CEO of the Whole Foods grocery chain engaged in sock-puppeting for eight years on Yahoo discussion boards. The Federal Trade Commission noticed and called him on it, and the case illustrates - for everyone, from cyberbullies to politicians to corporate executives - that online anonymity "is an illusion." And Whole Foods CEO John Mackey's actions could potentially destroy his company's bid to acquire another grocery chain, Wild Oats. The Times cites one business analyst as saying CEO sock-puppeting is "the tip of the iceberg." It's a good case study for cybercitizenship lessons in homes and schools, looking at the difference between ethical and unethical spin control.

Grown up cyberbullying & spin control

We’re hearing more and more about the teenage, queen-bee-wannabe kind, but adults are certainly not immune to cyberbullying – not on the user-driven Web, where defamation can happen to anybody, whether a parent or a public figure. The Washington Post describes some particularly tough examples and the reputation-management providers they’ve turned to. “Charging anything from a few dollars to thousands of dollars a month, companies such as International Reputation Management, Naymz and ReputationDefender don't promise to erase the bad stuff on the Web. But they do assure their clients of better results on an Internet search, pushing the positive items up on the first page and burying the others deep.”

Of course these organizations help with teenagers’ reputations too, but let’s hope it won’t come to this potentially costly fix for them. What these services do is something a lot of people can do for themselves with a little bit of time – put a little positive p.r. out there on the Web about themselves (such as a blog or social-networking profile or two or three to which good friends can post supportive comments to) that search-engine crawlers can find too. I’ve mentioned this in the past, the perhaps unfortunate but growing need to learn and teach our kids how to do our/their own spin control. It seems the choices are becoming 1) stay very anonymous and private online, 2) be less private and more spin-savvy, or 3) be very public and either spend a lot of time spin-doctoring our own reputations or a lot of money paying professionals to do it. Most young people will probably fall somewhere around No. 2 or will be in denial, think they’re in category No. 1, and occasionally need a little spin-doctor help, whether amateur or professional.

Employers searching social sites

Just another bit of evidence that job recruiters are “stalking” too (see my feature this week) – using social sites to find out more about job candidates. Though it may take employers a little more work, they probably prefer free “background checks” to costly services. According to AllHeadlineNews.com, “Rob McGovern, CEO and chairman of online job site Jobfox, claims that recruiters are increasingly using content from social networking sites to get more information on job candidates.” Remind young job seekers in your family. But remember, too, what Jason Fry of the Wall Street Journal suggests – that, as time goes on, more and more recruiters and employers are social networking themselves (see “Growing up in public”). BTW, here’s Business Week on the professional networking part of social networking.