Advice on “facebook and other sites” while job seeking
Once again, the career placement office at my law school is there for me. This time, it’s to remind me how bad the internet is when you are looking for a job. Their weekly email newsletter sent to all students included a “REMINDER RE USE OF FACEBOOK AND OTHER SITES WHILE JOB SEEKING.” Ah-ha! I thought: perhaps they are catching on to the value of fb as a professional tool. Maybe they now see that 150,000,000 people can’t all be wrong.
If only. Here’s what they had to say:
For those students seeking employment, please remember that it is now a common practice for employers to check Facebook, MySpace and blogs when considering prospective hires. Remember it may not even be your entry, but that you appear somewhere else in what an employer may feel is a “lack of good judgment” situation. Make any deletions/corrections now…..it is not always as easy as one may think to delete something or have it taken down. We have in the past two years had students lose offers because of the above and have heard from employers last fall that in searching several of our students, they found information that entered into their hiring decisions. Please be cautious. What you post should be professional.
This narrow view does nothing more than illustrate how little the people espousing it know about the internet, let alone about the power of social media. They forget that most students have grown up using online tools to meet people and share information. Students today have far and away a better understanding than administrators and faculty of what it means to put themselves online. We know who might be looking, from our grandparents to federal agents. We know that once something is online, it never goes away. We know how easy and assumed it is that our name will be googled the instant a potential employer finds us even remotely interesting or hirable.
And most of all, we know that things we post on facebook in an album entitled “Let’s pretend it’s undergrad!!” or “Never again: New Year’s Ughhhh” will for the most part be taken for what they are: windows into the real lives of real adults. If a potential employer can’t deal with pictures of beer bongs and lingerie, they probably shouldn’t be conducting research about recent college grads on, well, facebook.
Imagine how dull the world would be if all you could gleam about someone from the internet was “professional.” No pictures of grandkids, no sharing recipes or hobbies. Just where you’ve worked, your GPA and a laundry list of carefully sanitized “interests.” That’s not the world I want to participate in. I trust someone who finds me on LinkedIn to know its purpose, and the same of facebook or twitter.
Let’s have a conversation about the value of getting to know people, and the internet as a vehicle to meet. Career services should understand this: they’re willing to send me off to BigLaw cocktail parties to network, but shudder to think if the photos therefrom ever see the light of day…
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I’m amazed you don’t know about the perils of the internet. Not only will you never get a job if you have a face book profile, but hackers will also steal you credit card info and you daughter will be kidnapped. I expect more from someone who claims to be internet savvy.
In all seriousness though, you might want to remove any mentions of your interest in “Milo and Otis” from your facebook profile. That will totally come back to haunt you later in life.
Comment by sbergus — January 30, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Greetings! I personally think that the legal system is turning away from the opportunity social networking offers from a business point of view. It seems a forward thinking profession would progress with technology. Laws are the root of our country, however it is still a business and you cannot grow a business without marketing and the future is social networking. In the next decade it will be difficult to find a printed newspaper or even a physical phone or yellow page book. All attorneys who do not develop and change their attitude about marketing are those that are not entrepreneurs or rainmakers. Rainmakers social network and all others work for other people.
“He who yells the loudest about the ethics of marketing are the ones who have no clients” A quote by me, Lisa Henry
Thank you for the platform. Take care!
Comment by Lisa Henry — February 1, 2009 at 1:37 am
Well said. When I discussed Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn over at http://socialmedialawstudent.com I was using one or two pieces of anecdotal evidence to show that CSO advisors were saying these things. It saddens me to hear that even more career offices are giving this kind of flawed advice. Good response and thoughts though.
Comment by Josh Camson — February 10, 2009 at 6:38 am
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Pingback by Nature of competition | Laura Bergus — February 12, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Amusing. I got my job through twitter, so I think your career services office is behind.
Although, some things do need to be policed (you would be surprised how many students have drug references on fb).
Comment by Jansen — February 21, 2009 at 5:40 pm
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Pingback by Social Media Best Practices for Law Schools (Part 2) | Social Media Law Student — March 29, 2009 at 10:44 pm
Um . . . you all seem to be missing the point. This has nothing to do with career offices being ‘behind the times’ – it has only to do with *legal employers* not being ready to value social networking on the internet. This is the proverbial shooting the messanger! Your career offices are simply passing on information and warnings from employers – not promoting the attitude or approach. Think about it – career counselors are FOR anything that will help students/alumni get jobs! Your rants should be directed at employers who are judging the content and making hiring decisions based on what they see online about candidates. You and the people who hire are 3 to 4 generations apart – and, perhaps unfortunately, it is the older generation running things now. So it is the applicant for a job that has to adjust to what the employer wants and expects, and I suggest that you career offices are just trying to let you know what that is. As employers understanding and approach to online content changes, you’ll be getting different messages from career offices about the topic.
Comment by counselorT — May 5, 2009 at 2:09 pm
counselorT: You make a good point, which is why we are working to create a best practices plan that will address how employers use social media as well. I didn’t realize until very recently how much influence schools have over how employers (especially large firms) conduct their recruiting, particularly for on-campus interviews. If career counselors, who employers trust to provide them with good candidates, are telling employers where and how to evaluate candidates online, it will help shift things in a direction that will save employers time and money (something that all employers value, not just those that are in “my generation”). The incidents of employers screening out “bad” applicants based on the applicants’ Facebook profiles happen because employers don’t know where else to look and students aren’t being counseled on creating a positive and professional online presence.
There will be some employers, regardless of age, who will continue to prefer receiving paper résumés and paying for student flybacks. But there is no good reason not to provide additional means for students and employers to connect, or at the very least encourage those who want to use social media for these purposes to think about what they are doing and how they should do it.
Comment by Laura Bergus — May 5, 2009 at 3:32 pm
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