Social Networking Snafus
Not all that many years ago, whenever I spoke to groups of interns, summer associates or new hires, I recommended that they pull down any page they might have created on a social networking site. If they hadn’t yet developed an electronic presence, I told them, “For heaven’s sake, don’t.”
This week, President Obama announced his reelection bid in a video on his website, making my previous advice seem about as relevant as the horse and buggy.
Hard and fast rules of etiquette regarding social networks have yet to be developed. In general, people with good sense know to post only those items—pictures or words—that they feel comfortable placing in their grandmother’s line of vision. There’s good reason for that. It turns out the fastest growing segment of Facebook.com users are women over the age of 55.
Current and prospective employees should be extremely careful in creating their on-line presence. According to a 2010 U.S. Department of Labor analysis, 72% of HR representatives use social networking in the hiring process. In most cases, HR professionals use social networking sites to screen candidates for behaviors that are inconsistent with the employer’s workplace values.
Once hired, employees face a growing number of work-related restrictions regarding what they may and may not post on-line. Twenty-seven percent of companies now have policies governing the content employees may post on their personal, home-based blogs, up from 7 percent in 2006, according to a study by the American Management Association and ePolicy Institute.
A generation or two ago, people who started work knew, if they didn’t have something nice to say, it was best for them to say nothing at all. Today’s workers are best served by applying that old-fashioned advice to their on-line lives.
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