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by Julie Desmond
The chocolate lab puppies at Golden Valley Humane Society are brown-eyed darlings. Ambling between kennels, with an eager ten year old leading the way, I perused the selection and planned the adoption process. This is when I overheard a guy tell his buddy, “Cute, but those labs have bad hips.” Suddenly, I had to rethink my future, weighing a random comment against everything I’d read and experienced about labs. One off-handed comment threw my entire plan off track.
A single comment or errant connection on a social networking site can have the same effect on a hiring manager. Even with updated privacy functions in place, assuming you use them, discovering your photos and your friends is so easy even a mother of a teenager, or a caveman, can do it.
People can and should use social networking. It demonstrates willingness to try new technologies and keeps you loosely connected to friends and acquaintances. Another plus: many companies now use internal or intranet systems that mimic commonly used sites like Facebook. Getting familiar socially might ease your learning curve at work.
The trick, of course, is to keep your profile and its appendages decent. Think, water-cooler worthy. How to do that?
Obvious: Engage privacy settings. Keep your posts decent. Defriend (even if temporarily) your friends whose profiles make you seem reckless. Remove unflattering photos.
More important: Use social sites to your advantage. Occasionally chat positively about your work, your boss, your co-workers, your successes. Be proud of who pays you because, hey, they pay you. Demonstrate your industry know-how and know-who by making inside connections, even with competitors, and by working in comments on industry current events among vacation photos and happy aquarium updates.
Parting thought for social networkers: Some is always good; usually, less is more.
Julie Desmond has fifteen years recruiting and career counseling experience. She currently leads job search and career planning workshops in Minneapolis, St Paul and Edina, MN. Write to julie@helpwantedworkshop.com.