Lessons I Learned from Employment and Networking Sites

Social networking sites are at the top of their careers, no questions asked. I bet 1 out of 10 Filipinos has an account in Facebook alone which has more than 640 Million registered users world wide. (March 2011)

Networking sites such as Twitter, Plurk, Tumblr, Flickr and Friendster has also gained their fair share of popularity in the social networking community.

It has become a standard that employers take a look at your social networking sites for background checking. I was told by my friend, that during her interview with one of her prospective employers, one of the panel Googled her name and found her Facebook site. Lucky for her because she has always been a fan of making her personal things as private as possible. All they saw was her profile picture and not so much information relevant to the employment process.

I wrote down here some things all of us must make to make us more worthy of the positions we are applying for or will be applying for in the future. And of course to make us more pleasing to the eyes of our current employer.

1. Never post a profile picture (or any picture) that suggests obscenity.

You don’t want your employee and your co-workers to see you as a high class whore, do you? Be as professional as possible and have a quality check before hitting the upload button.

2. Never say bad words about your current employer.

This includes: “I’m sick and tired of my job. I want to resign.”

“My employer doesn’t pay me well.”

“I have a low salary. I must work 4 hours to compensate.”

These are bad attitudes and should be avoided.

3. Never say something bad about the other person.

Bad personality is often reflected in social networking sites. Some people tend to think that they have all the rights to post anything on his wall. Be cautious because the world sees and hears you. You don’t want to end up in jail just because of your wall post, do you?

4. Always say what you mean and mean what you say.

Some people crumble when confronted. If you don’t like this to happen to you, always say what you mean and be tactful.

5. Maintain a positive attitude.

Employers don’t want to hire people with negative attitude. They know that if they hire them, they have the risk of contaminating their company with social viruses. Always maintain a positive attitude in every post. Anyway, positivity attracts positivity.

Now, if you don’t want these suggestions, go to the privacy settings of your social networking site and hit the “for friends only” choice. Or better yet make yourself unsearchable.

~Till then.