It seems like once a week, you’ll see a new story about employers reading their employees Facebook page, Twitter, or other social media.
I’m calling BS on most of this hype.
I do agree that people should be aware of what they post on social media. If you work for Apple, you shouldn’t post that you’re working on the iPhone 5 and it will be released on such date and have these features before the official press conference. I work in the brokerage industry and I’m well aware I can’t just start posting about what stocks I like and dislike.
But I think most of the hype is garbage. An applicant didn’t get a job because there were pictures of him drinking a beer in his college dorm room. Someone got fired because they ‘checked in’ at a gay bar on a Saturday night.
I don’t have the greatest respect for most HR people, but I think if they’re too lazy to read a resume, they’re not going to spend their time reading random Facebook pages.
Actually, employers reading employees’ Facebook pages is not far-fetched. Our small organization has a widespread social media presence and we picked up on it pretty quickly when a couple of employees posted some negative commentary about the org on their pages–resulting in private conversations with said employees and a reminder to all about privacy settings, etc.
They don’t have to read random Facebook pages. If you are silly enough to add your employer or even some employees, it’ll just show up on their news feed when they are using Facebook for other reasons.
And, yes, I know some require you to add them. You probably should have more than one Facebook account in that place.
My Facebook privacy settings are set as high as possible; HR definitely isn’t reading what I write. My boss and I are friends on Facebook, though, but from what I can tell by looking at her page she rarely gets on there.
Almost everyone at my old workplace were Facebook friends, voluntarily. It was a startup without a stiff corporate culture; also and in the same vein the management just didn’t give a flying f*** about the employees. I doubt they ever bothered to look at our pages.
However, I had learned at a previous job that you never mention your place of work using any identifiable information on the internet. I never said a single thing about work on Facebook or any other account that could be linked to me, and I have NEVER used the company’s name or any other employee’s full name on the internet.
I don’t have to worry about an employer reading my facebook page because I don’t have a facebook page. End of problem for me. Message boards are about as “social media” as I get.
Nobody will connect my Facebook page with me, because my account there is under another name. And anyhow, I have the privacy all the way up on that, so no one can see much anyway.
Searching on my real name will reveal my Linkedin account, which I put there specifically for potential employers to get interested in checking out my résumé. So for me Linkedin is for career, pretty much a résumé + cover letter writ large, while Facebook is for relaxing with cool people. I’ve been very cautious about letting my real name appear online, but when I do, it’s done with the intent of making me look spiffy career-wise, and does not give away anything compromising or any personal information that needs to be kept secure.
First of all, you can’t read my Facebook page unless I’ve friended you.
Also, I work for a startup-y, dot-com software consulting firm. So typically what happens is when we “read your Facebook page” we will tend to give you a good-natured hard time about any of the shit we happen to find on it. Doesn’t matter if you are a first year analyst or the Senior VP of the NY office.
And actually, we have our own internal social networkin app for employees.
Like the OP, I’m calling bullshit. I spent 6 years working in computer forensics/electronic discovery/records management/compliance and the past year or so working in mining corporate data for other reasons. I have yet to see any operationalized method of reviewing employee’s Facebook pages. Any company that is so rigid and stuffy to be concerned about what you post on Facebook is too rigid and stuffy to comprehend Facebook.
I’m concerned that my employer/potential employer is reading the Facebook page of the guy who has the exact same uncommon/rare name I do.
Just kidding; we live half a country apart, so I doubt anyone thinks he’s me*. It is a little unsettling, tho’.
Except the old high school classmates who don’t know where I live who friended him thinking he’s me. (At least, that’s what I’m assuming from the familiar names I’m seeing.)
a] I understand how Facebook privacy settings work and very little of what I post is visible to friends-of-friends, much less the public. b] None of my jobs have a tight-laced, professional environment where anyone cares about shit like that. I’m FB friends with my manager (as well as a bunch of employees from my department and others) but you should see what he posts. c] I don’t post anything most would take issue with, anyway. I live a boring life where most nights, I’m at home, not intoxicated, with Facebook open.
I hope you are all aware of Google Alerts. This feature crawls the web looking for instances where the search term you signed up for is mentioned.
For instance, if you are working for my fictional company, Fictional Inc., each time you complain about working at Fictional Inc, I will receive notification from Google. And you might get called into HR to explain yourself. I know that the people I work for do this.
This is how a company can respond to any negative post that is made about their products or company. If you are bitching about working at Fictional Inc on your Facebook page I will find out.
Facebook is a business, and that business relies upon selling your information to 3rd parties.
Your friends are on Facebook, but Facebook is not your friend.
I joined Facebook because other people at the last place I worked were joining it, and still about half of my FB friends work (or used to work) there. So I’ve never put anything on Facebook that would be embarrassing for a potential employer to see.
I maintain two separate fbook profiles. One is public and searchable, the other is not. No compromising material (text OR pictures) is posted to the public page. So if an employer searches for me, I’ll look wholesome and well-adjusted and shit.
My theory is that you can’t pretend to be modern and hip without having a facebook page. So if they searched and didn’t find one, it’d look suspicious.
Google doesn’t crawl Facebook status updates or walls.
There are specialized companies out there that claim to be able to do this (usually for someone to justify ‘buzz’ generated by an online campaign), but Google doesn’t.