Social Networking: Yes or No?

Many candidates are reluctant to jump on the social networking bandwagon. Personal Facebook or Myspace pages can be problematic, raising issues of privacy and accountability; especially if you don't want your current or prospective boss to see those photographs from Saturday night's party. And with the record numbers of people signing up to these websites this can, and does, occur. Recent statistics cited in a blog by Resume Bear showed that over 400 million people actively use Facebook, which is more than the combined population of Japan, Mexico and Russia. Twitter users were stated at around 100 million with a staggering 16 billion "tweets" since its launch in 2006.

Sites like Facebook, Myspace and Twitter have been hailed as great tools for getting in touch with old colleagues, schoolmates and even lost relatives. However, despite the hype circulating around the social benefits of such websites, this does not mean that professional needs and potential have gone unnoticed. Professional networking sites such as LinkedIn and Link Me are becoming increasingly popular, and not just for job seekers! Frequently used by recruiters and employers alike, these websites have become a useful tool for finding prospective staff.

Resume Bear states that social networking can be useful for job seekers provided they manage their profiles correctly. However, the same blog also stated that employers not only use these websites to find job candidates but also to screen them, highlighting that there are numerous topics which job seekers and employees should never "tweet" in order to prevent impairing their job opportunities.

So while some job seekers may possess both social and professional pages on these websites, there is a high risk that employment chances will be affected by the types of information available in the public domain.

While encouraging job seekers to use professional networking sites to market their CV's, EBR are using this article as a warning in order to urge candidates to take caution with what information is made available on the Internet.

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