Good morning blogosphere, twitterverse, Facebookians and all
of you others out there. I hope you are
having a terrific week leading up to a three day weekend! Things are going terrific here in the
Thompson household. Baby Kai is almost
sleeping through the night, we are getting our new puppy next wee and I’m very
proud to report that my oldest daughter, Ava, caught her first fish this weekend!
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| I'm such a proud Papa!!! |
As you all know I’ve become a pretty big proponent of
harnessing social media to help your career.
However, as with anything terrific, there are drawbacks. Social media can be a huge headache for your
career. Today I’m going to talk about
six situations that can cause problems in your career and how to handle
them. Here we go!
1. Your Boss Friends You on Facebook
This is such a tricky situation. When you get the message that Mr. Burns wants
to be your friend on Facebook, many of you start asking why. Is he checking up on me? Did I do something
wrong? Is there something on my profile
I should be afraid of? If I say no will
he feel disrespected or have his feelings hurt?
These are all valid concerns.
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| What do you do when this guy friends you? It's probably innocent... |
First of all, lets talk about why your boss is friending
you. The most likely reason is because
they like you. You need to remember that
for some people Facebook is this addicting
platform where people collect connections to make them feel better about
themselves. Everyone has a different filter
for what they call a friend on Facebook.
I would wager that 95% of the time they are just being friendly. However, having your boss on there does pose
some problems. What if there is stuff
you don’t want him to see…
So…you have two options:
- Say Yes – you can do this if you
think it would hurt their feelings to say no. Also it is probably easiest solution
provided that your profile doesn’t have anything embarrassing on it.
- Say No – This is the hardest one,
but you can do this and preserve your relationship with your boss. What you need to do is to find a time to
talk to them alone and explain to them that to you Facebook is a private
thing and that you only use it to connect to very close friends and
family. They will most likely
understand that unless… you are friends with everyone else in the
office. If that is the case you
either need to roll the dice and risk making them mad or just accepting
them and cleaning up your profile.
2. You have co-workers or friends that post
inappropriate thing on your wall
This is a really common problem. There are some people out there – you
probably don’t know who you are – that either just like to complain or have no
filter – by no filter I mean they have absolutely no capacity to understand
what is appropriate to share with everyone or not. You know these people – they typically say
something wrong and when you look at them funny they say –What? If you know these people like I do – please
know I’m not condemning you – you can’t change them. It’s in their DNA. These are the friends that think it is
hilarious to tag a picture of you they snapped at 3 AM with a great caption
telling the world what you did. So what
do you do? You can try talking to them
about it – this probably wont’ work. You
can also de-friend them but nobody likes drama.
There is a pretty simple solution here.
Go to Facebook’s privacy settings and click on edit settings for
Timeline and Tagging – in here there is an option for you to review posts that
you are tagged in before they appear in your timeline. This will help you screen it.
3. You Interview for a Job and the Hiring
Manager connects to you on LinkedIn or Facebook
This one is a little trickier and each network poses a
different problem. If the hiring
manager does this on Facebook it is most
likely because they are checking up on you.
Most companies don’t do this because of liability issues but some do it
on purpose. This shouldn’t be a problem
if you have already been proactive about cleaning up your Facebook page. However, it still might feel like an invasion
of your privacy. In this case I suggest
thinking long and hard about how much you want this job. If you really want it then maybe it is a hoop
you should jump through. If you are on
the fence…just ignore it and move on. If
you are asked about it just say that you aren’t on Facebook very much and
hadn’t checked it yet.
LinkedIn is only tricky because it is a professional forum
and most likely you are connected to your boss.
It might look suspicious if you take a morning off and later that day
adding a connection from a competitor.
If you are uncomfortable accepting the invite then send the person an
email and explain your situation – tell them that your boss is a suspicious
person that micro manages you and that it would be problematic to accept them
immediately. Suggest that you will
connect to them in the future. At the
end of the day, the biggest concern you have here is that you inadvertently
offend someone by not accepting their invitation. A little bit of communication will go a long
way.
4. Your Facebook Profile is Unsavory
Here’s the deal. Try
as you might it is really hard to hide all aspects of your Facebook
profile. The internet is literally a
vast blackhole of opportunities to hurt your career if you allow the wrong
information to get out there. Before you
post something or accept to have a picture of you tagged think about what a
future employer might think. Better yet
use this rule of thumb:
“Would I be
embarrassed if my Mom saw this?”
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| Make your momma proud! |
For all of you with hardcore partying moms – please just go
with the example and replace mom with some other easily offendable relative
that you don’t want to upset. Just be
careful – it can hurt you. For more on
this read the end of this article I wrote earlier this year:
5. Your Resume Doesn’t Match Your Profile
This is a big area that catches people up. Many people choose to have an abbreviated
version of their resume on LinkedIn.
They leave out information that isn’t important or unflattering in order
to make themselves appear more marketable.
This in itself isn’t a problem. Your
profile is a walking advertisement that should make you look good. However, you need to make sure that important
information matches up. Say you worked
for a company for six months and it is on your resume. Some people embellish their LinkedIn profile
and add that time to a longer job to make them appear more stable. This is a big turnoff. Instead of embellishing just make sure that
the dates add up and leave the less important stuff off. Don’t lie – even if it is unintentional you
can seriously hurt your career.
6. Employer asks for your Facebook or LinkedIn
log in information
This is a practice that is somewhat common in certain
industries. Essentially some companies
feel that this is a valid way to conduct a reference. I’m not going to levy my judgment on the
practice on this one. Honestly, how I
feel about it doesn’t really matter – it doesn’t help people get jobs. Instead, I’ll tell you how to deal with it. You have two options:
- Scrub your profile and give them log
in – this depends on how much you need the job
- Take a moral stand and walk away –
if you feel that this is an invasion of your privacy you should politely
say that you aren’t comfortable
giving out this information and ask if there are any alternative
solutions. If they say no
(companies with this policy most likely will), then tell them politely
that you would like to remove yourself from consideration.
Please understand that the key here is to be polite. It is a very small world out there and no
matter how egregious the request of a potential employer you need to be
gracious in your negative response. If
you have a strong impression and tell them how you really feel the run the risk
that it will be misconstrued to others in the industry.
So there you go – it’s a strange new world we are living
in! What do you think? Please feel free to leave comments or email
me at
sthompson@insurance-csg.com.
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