Also, there is a lot more information

Also, there is a lot more information on the web than just myspace. zoominfo, etc. You should check to make sure it is correct.

Also, don't think people don't look at your address on googlemaps. On one occasion, there was a guy who said was very flexible with salary, location, etc. Then he kept on giving us reason for the delay in accepting the offer and start date. There was no way he was going to relocate. On googlemaps, he had a plane in his backyard. I am convinced that he was just hold on to us trying to get another offer in the area.

-Edwin

Frightening ... It seems again that you

Frightening ... It seems again that you read minds.
I have just been contacted via a "my space"-type site by one of the candidates I had last week in interviews!

Are you recommending against ever

Are you recommending against ever writing anything political in public, for fear that people who disagree strongly with your position will question your judgment? For example, if you write something either supporting or condemning the United States' policies in the Middle East, even in the mildest terms, there are a host of people out there who will find what you write offensive. Will managers consider it to be poor judgment to have written this in public?

Also, do you differentiate in this matter between posts on your MySpace home page (for example) and signed material in other public media, such as blog posts, blog comments, and letters to the editor? After all, anything you sign with your name in public will show up if someone googles you.

With regards to free speech- sorry

With regards to free speech- sorry Americans, the First Amendment limits only what the federal government can prohibit you from saying. In no case does it provide any protection from consequences of what you say; the first amendment is not carte blanche to say what you like and not suffer any ramifications. Your employer, religious affiliates, school and friends are all perfectly within their rights to observe your behavior and draw conclusions from it.

Just like the podcast on how to give feedback about dress- your choice to participate in drunken debauchery is fine. It's the behavior of advertising it that can result in corrective action.

Management in the government agency I

Management in the government agency I work for cannot access any of the social networking sites. When I requested access through our firewall, the matter was referred to Legal, whose response was (edited to protect the innocent):

"Thank you, Susan. The problem with using social networking sites like “My Space” or its competitors is that the practice on a routine basis yields information that would never ever be asked of an applicant, such as photographs (race), national origin, religious belief, political affiliation, disability, and age. Once we acquire this information, it leaves the agency open to charges of discrimination and puts upon the agency the burden of establishing that these factors did not influence the recruitment decision. The question is whether the information on the social networking site is relevant to the position and whether the remote chance of collecting information that would disqualify the candidate (such as admission of current drug use or admission of misconduct with a prior employer) would outweigh the known risk of routinely collecting information that would not be proper under EEOC guidance. Once we acquire the information, it would become a record that must be retained, although it would not be available for public inspection unless the candidate was selected. Our selection files are reviewed on occasion by EEOC, . Content which would indicate a closeted discriminatory practice would be highly dangerous to the agency, exposing the agency to a broader pattern and practice investigation, something the agency seeks strongly to avoid.

A review of most scholarly legal publications and all reported and many unreported cases in the federal and states courts in this country, which I conducted through Westlaw prior to writing this e-mail, disclosed no legal authority on this question. After 25 years in this field in both private and public practice, however, I am completely comfortable in saying that litigation upon the very recent practice of some recruiters of using social networking sites as part of the vetting process will come. It is simply too new a practice for the undesirable second-order consequences to have shown up.

I think that such sites can be searched when the agency faces litigation or an unemployment claim or is conducting a personnel investigation of alleged misconduct. As a routine practice of vetting applicants, I believe the obvious risks of collecting forbidden information far outweighs the remote possibility of turning up material that would disqualify the applicant. "

End of issue for my purposes, I guess.

#1_Don, Thank you. Very interesting

#1_Don,

Thank you. Very interesting point.

John

In the middle of the cast when he was

In the middle of the cast when he was talking about doubt and, if it causes one to pause, whether something should be on a MySpace page, Mark missed a golden opportunity to use one of my favorite movie quotes. It comes from the movie "Ronin":

"Whenever there is doubt, there is no doubt."

Dear MTer's, Just read this on

Dear MTer's,

Just read this on MSN.

LONDON - A businessman won damages Thursday against an old friend who put libelous and unauthorised information about him on the social networking Web site Facebook.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25840728/wid/11915829?GT1=40006

So not only do you have to clean up your page, but pages that might exist about you that you did not put up.

Technology is wonderful ;-)

Great timing on this podcast. I am in

Great timing on this podcast. I am in hiring mode, hiring engineers and surveyors. I always check Myspace, Facebook, Linkin and Google. It is amazing what I find, even with engineers. It is not the behavior that I am so critical, hey I grew up in the 60's! It is the stupidity of publishing the behavior.
The other amazing lack of judgement is in the use of email addresses. I had one person use their email as eucaine@------.com on the resume. Well, eucaine is synthetic cocaine. Duh. Don't mess with a tech savy boomer...We will see right through you and toss your resume in the recycling bin.

You have to be so careful about

You have to be so careful about publishing sensitive material. Don't do it. This could really hurt your chances to succeed in business. www.readtheanswer.com/index.php?RTA=web2

I removed my profiles from MySpace and

I removed my profiles from MySpace and FaceBook a couple of months ago when a friend was "harassed" by his boss concerning his personal MySpace page. The incident made me consider removing the current page - although there was nothing "harmful" to my career on those social networks.
However, I would rather err on the side of caution. I have little reason to place any doubt in my Directors mind about my personal life for the world to see.

In addition to the social networking

In addition to the social networking pages, we also need to be wary of using chat clients like msn, yahoo or aim. They all have settings to record your chats. Even if you turn yours off, the person at the other end can be logging everything you say.

So that innocent little comment or sexist/racist remark you said just in fun is now carved in stone, just like many of those voicemails etc. Cached and stored.

*RNTT

RNTT- One we missed! Well done

RNTT-

One we missed! Well done sir.

Mark

Thanks Mark

Thanks Mark :)

I just came across the following story,

I just came across the following story, the original can be found at: http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2008/09/04/facebook-privacy.html

Basically, the article says: "A digital divide exits between how youth perceive network privacy and how the older generation of managers and executives perceive it," Levin said.

I believe that this reinforces your message, and might open the topic up to the next generation. Thanks guys, I look forward to your casts every week.

[This post has been edited by Mark to respect copyrights elsewhere on the web - please see the link to read the whole article, which is quite good. - H]

Hey all, this is a good

Hey all, this is a good find:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07awareness-t.html

It is an aside from the current topic of effectiveness, but it is a relevant and thought-provoking overview of the current state of social media.

It is well written, well researched, and its consequences will affect everyone.

In short, its the best article I've picked up this month, and destroys BW's last cover story on social media. *Also note this is coming from a Gen Y'r

Enjoy!

QD

This is good stuff. And don't forget,

This is good stuff. And don't forget, it works BOTH ways! I recently googled and searched for an individual I was going to have an interview with. I found out who she was, what her background is, etc, and I think that help build rapport during the interview (although you obviously need to be careful about using the info). Lots of executives use LinkedIn, and it's great to see a potential employers background...

Maybe this news article, "Crew sacked

Maybe this news article, "Crew sacked over Facebook posts", proves the point. Virgin Atlantic crew were sacked for criticisng the airline via Facebook :

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7703129.stm

Galactically stupid?

Mark- Yes indeed. I'm normally not

Mark-

Yes indeed. I'm normally not much for non-business magazine advice, but when lawyers in there say, "your company can fire you for it"...they MEAN it.

Galactically stupid.

Mark

MySpace

I have a question on this: What if you are a person who makes MySpace pages etc and you don't use your own name or any real information? When I first got into and on a computer (I remember learning stuff in DOS), we were told not to ever use our real name etc. What about having a fun MySpace page under a false name and then having another MySpace for networking etc.?

Could the employer etc, still figure out who you were and look at your MySpace if they had no idea what your false name etc was?

facebook

I just ran into a facebook issue that illustrates the potential problem.  I login to face book, and one of my facebook friends has been tagged in a photo.  Sounds fine, it were "Jane Doe on a picnic" or the like.  But a woman was tagged as someone in a pornographic (strong on graphic) picture.  Obviously, not her--as it was two men.  No thanks.  It was the result of a malicious prank, but not funny.  Emabarassing, at best.    Especially since I am the woman's pastor.  FB fixed it by locking out the offenders account (turns out it was cyper hijacked).  Still, think of that popping up on FB page of all the Middle School youth who are on FB.  Very Bad.  So now I am sorting through how to think about how someone in my FB friend list could end up posting something that shows up, without my knowing, on my other FB friends list.

Wow...

Thanks for your post, VBHill.  This is exactly the kind of thing we've got to be careful about.  Even if the vast VAST VAST maojority of stuff is harmless, that small minority is a problem if your FB page is getting looked at by recruiters or associates and you aren't controlling your online image.

Fortune just ran a cover story, "How Facebook is Taking Over Our Lives".  I sort of disagree, but I don't doubt its impact or ubiquity.

The smart professional is...careful.

Thanks again.

Mark

Companies watching Facebook

http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/web/2009/04/17/1239475038317.html

Sign of the times - there are now companies in the business of monitoring employee comments on social networking sites.

Maybe it's a case now of publish AND perish!

Read the article...

And I would have fired (actually, created the resignation of ) every one of the former employees mentioned.  Stupid, unprofessional, and damaging.

US law (can't say about others) allows companies to do this quite easily.

Keadaru's question

You can *try* to be anonymous...but it's really not a reasonable expectation these days.

If I know your IP, I know your location. That is information most web pages can easily collect just from you visiting them.  To see this in action (and completely freak yourself out), visit this website--it will place you on a map!

http://whatismyipaddress.com/

Add to that what you might say--under a false name--about your employer or job, and you're beginning to give out a lot of information.

Then add in that your friends and possibly family know your false name and who you are. It's easy for them to link that name to you in a way that is searchable--a forum post, Facebook page, whatever.

Then add in careless privacy practices on whatever sites you're using, or things like Facebook changing its interface and your privacy settings changing without warning....
Pretty soon, you've got a whole lot of evidence out there for who you really are.*

The best you can hope for (which I have with "Bug Girl") is plausible deniability.  But most people in my field (and at my job) actually do know who I am, including my boss.

Whether it's your name or not, if it's not something you wouldn't want your mom to see, don't post it on the internet!!

(And I agree with Mark--those examples were waaaaay over the line.)

---------

*Example: I discovered that if you have used your pseudononymous email with LinkedIn, even if it's marked private, LinkedIn will tell whoever knows that email who you really are IRL.  All they have to do is enter your email.  That was a bit of surprise.

?

IP link showed me in Dorset UK, nice place - 300miles out.

Try again!

Chris

agree

It's interesting with that article - the Sydney Morning Herald seems to be running a type of campaign to make inappropriate Facebook posters the "victims" of nasty corporations.  They even ran a blog, inviting comments asking if anyone had been sacked because of social networking:

http://blogs.smh.com.au/mashup/archives//021392.html

I suppose the good news is that most the respondents said that the employees got what they deserved for being dumb enough to post criticism of their employers in public forums.

Maybe I'm too old, but I really don't see posting things on the internet as anything other than publishing.  And being published means it's no longer in your control.

"I didn't know I was causing harm" or "I didn't think it would get this bad" is really indefensible.  The world rightly judges on actions, not intentions.

Evidence to back up the Facebook/MySpace podcast

An article from emarketer today ( http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007268 ) supports the idea that your Facebook page etc. can do you harm. The full article is well worth a read, but these quotes give the gist

"A summer 2009 survey conducted by Harris Interactive for CareerBuilder.com found that 45% of US human resources professionals used social networks to research job candidates at least occasionally."

"The findings were more likely to get candidates rejected than hired: 35% of HR professionals said social networking content had caused them to eliminate a candidate..."

"The top reasons for rejection were, unsurprisingly, “provocative or inappropriate photographs or information” (53%) and information about drinking or using drugs (44%). But job candidates were also hurt by negative postings about their previous employers, poor communication skills, discriminatory remarks and other faux pas."

This Just In - Another Employee Sacked

Waitress fired for gripe about tip on Facebook

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37192342/from/ET?gt1=43001

JHB

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