The Link between Social Media and Your Professional Life

Social media provides the opportunity for someone to connect with people who they would otherwise have no hope of getting in contact with. Linked in, twitter, and facebook to some extent allow people to make connections on a less personal level to people they may or may not have already met. To paraphrase, expanding your network is expanding your net worth. The more people you know, the more chances you'll have to come in contact with someone who can help you get where you want to be. Social media is quickly becoming a great way for recruiters to find the type of employee they are looking for. Most of these services (facebook, twitter, Linked in) are free and a very large number of professionals use them on a regular basis. Some people who are on the hunt for a job will create their own website, blog, or at the very least post some information about what they are looking for and a way to find out more information. Linked in provides a way to post a resume with easy to access recommendations, youtube allows users to post a video of their resume, and twitter allows those searching for a job the ability to 'follow' a company and make connections with current employees. That list of ways different social networking can benefit your professional life is just touching on the major players in the social media world - facebook, twitter, and youtube.  Some "lesser-known networks" that should be mentioned as well are Jigsaw, Visible Path, Gather, and Sermo (Gillin).

Social media obviously can be a help in terms of advancing your professional life but there are several ways that it could hurt it as well. I, like many others in the workforce today, am 'friends' with my superiors at work on facebook and twitter. It seems some people forget that what they post via these mediums is for public consumption and many times there are complaints about their job or pictures of them on their "sick" day that are posted for anyone (including their boss) to see. You have to be conscious of what you post and recognize that most companies are going to look for employees who are responsible and tasteful, not careless and tacky.

I once applied for a job in which all applicants and eventually employees were seen as the "face of the organization." We were on public display and whatever anyone knew about us reflected the company we were working for. The interview process for this job was several stages long and after some cuts there were training sessions with the potential hires. Each 'ambassador' was asked to clean up their facebook account and be aware that anything that was ever posted about them was out on the web for everyone to see. I do not have much experience with inappropriate social media and job hunting but this one job that I held in which we were required to sign agreements pledging to be good examples to the community. Negative social media could have adversely affected this job situation. In some cases the employees were scolded by superiors who were monitoring the facebook pages for inappropriate content.