Week 5 EOC: Social Networks and Job Hunting

Facebook, LinkedIn, what’s next Twitter, where the best comment gets you the job. Having seen and knowing of people who place information on sites where they embellish the truth this seems a like an atmosphere of who can spin a tail better than the next. Most individuals who are seeking jobs today pay for a professional write up to be crafted for what most would say are pretty mundane job careers. Thus leading us to the problem that currently exists where many well-meaning people can’t write their own bios, writing skills have plummeted over the last few years because of the misuse of the English language. Using a social networking site has so many untold issues, to say the least it allows for individuals to create whoever they want to be in an atmosphere that is often difficult at best to verify. Using social networking sites for sharing and vouching for products and their use, I think is brilliant, and then we have the everyday person giving their first-hand accounts about the use, reliability and the quality of a product or service, now that I can subscribe to. I have witnessed firsthand many applicants vying for positions, coming in for an interview, only to find out that these individuals learned buss words by copying what others had placed on well-meaning resume’s from LinkedIn, Facebook or better yet from one of the many online sites where information abounds where you can find out how to write the perfect sentence. Brand-Ambassadors, folks testing the water for products and services I would give this approach to seeking new people to help with promoting these types of things a thumbs-up. Looking for someone to run a geo-thermal site or better yet heading up an environmental services company, I would look elsewhere. For me to use social networking methods to hire for jobs that require someone to be vetted and then expecting that person to stay around for any length of time the hiring statistics quoted in the “Recruiters Troll Facebook for Candidates They like” (The WSJ, 8/8/2011) would have to exceed the 1% of those being hired presently by social networking sites. It costs companies a lot of time, and money to bring people on, and train them for work, my thoughts are that if you found that special someone on a social networking site then what would prevent them from continuing the hunt for jobs on those sites and not just consider your job offer and training for something that they have settled for, my thoughts lead to loyalty, no mention of that from these articles and so I rest my case.