HYPERTRANSPARENCY

By: Douglas He Image via Scott Wilkinson (Wikimedia)

The Impact on Social Media on the Job Hunt

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Once upon a time, gaining employment was all about putting your best foot forward when you decided it was best.

Once upon a time, the only time an employer could judge you, was if you chose to be seen.

Our identities in work and family were separate and well-defined…

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“Social media is a key player in the job search process today.Sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ allow employers to

get a glimpse of who you are outside the confines of a résumé, cover letter, or interview [… effectively blurring the boundaries of personal and professional]” –Jacquelyn Smith, Forbes

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“80% of HR professionals use online reputation information as part of their hiring process” –Dan Schawbel, Forbes

“70% [of HR professionals] had rejected a job candidate due to what they found online” –Dan Schawbel, Forbes

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“the Internet … is threatening, at an almost existential level, our ability to control our identities; to preserve the option of reinventing ourselves and starting anew; to overcome our checkered pasts.” –Jeffrey Rosen, New York Times

Once upon a time, we could control our carefully segmented identities; we could preserve and mould our public perception and reputation… a reputation, which is a critical criterion to be hired.

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“college students [are] ruining their online reputations with inappropriate comments, photos and videos. With employers using social media to screen candidates, it’s more important than ever that new graduates clean up and protect their online identities.” –John Millen, Reputation Group

Today, everything you said online, even as an impressionable and not yet fully developed teenager; can and will be dug up.

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“the Internet is shackling us to everything that we have ever said, or that anyone has said about us, making the possibility of digital self-reinvention seem like an ideal from a distant era.” –Jeffrey Rosen, New York Times

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If people don’t – CAN’T forget anything we have ever done … can they ever forgive?

“With little control over how employers use social media checks, job seekers should keep their privacy settings high and their networks active.” –Suzanne Bowness, Globe and Mail

”there are also firms out there who make vetting candidates … their business. [They]assemble dossiers of plusses (honors, awards, charitable work) and minuses (references to drugs, explicit photos, evidence or racist or sexist attitudes) on potential hires

-Meghan Casserly, Forbes

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“We’ve become a nation of digital scarlet letters.” -NBC

When it becomes harder and harder to forget, a second chance becomes virtually impossible. For many working age people today, the first step of finding a job is doing their best to cleaning up their digital past.

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Some people (including Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard Law Professor) are now lobbying to create terms of digital expiration. This would mean that after a given time period, online actions of a person would be wiped completely from every database.

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HYPERTRANSPARENCYThe phenomenon of an era where personal and corporate reputation relies heavily on public perception, and opinions of one person passed onto another. In short, it is an age where everything you do online can be tracked and recorded- where everyone is scrutinized as a movie star would be

-Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide

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With social media merging the personal and professional lives of every job seeker out there, hypertransparency presents a unique set of opportunities and threats.

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For the job-seeker, one ill-advised post or picture could cause a running train wreck through one’s reputation and integrity in the eye of the employer.

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“Those of us who exert the necessary effort to maximize our digital reputations will be rewarded: opportunities will find us. Those of us who don't will miss out.”

-Michael Fertik, Harvard Business Review

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Your social identity doesn’t have to be something that must be hidden. It can be your most powerful tool in this age of hypertransparency. It can be your ticket to standing up and standing out.

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“Your social media presence can be much more than a 'walled garden‘, accessible only to your most trusted friends and family. This suggests that a completely new set of strategies, such as establishing transparency, personal brand and authenticity, are fast becoming the keys to success in today's competitive job search.” -Daniel Gulati, Huffington Post

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For the employer, this is the golden age for capitalising on data mining, to produce the most effective hires. Finding an applicant’s social identity is equivalent to finding what they are really like … behind the CV and the flashy formal wear.

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“By now, many employers think that who you are online is more revealing of your character than a résumé …that means keeping your LinkedIn profile updated, setting up a Google alert for your name, and using Twitter strategically.”-Vivian Giang, Business Insider

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However, it is important to keep in mind that the effect of social media is largely dependent on the nature of the position required.

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“Justin Bieber may have 23 million Twitter followers, but he’s definitely not the best guy to do my online marketing. There’s a whole lot more to it.”-Chirag Nangia, Reppify

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In fact, in most cases social media influence and digital reputation is only a piece of the puzzle.

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Personally, I discovered and began using social media during the birth and rise of giants such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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I am fully committed to seamlessly merging my social identity and professional brand. I fully intend to mould a strong reputation to my advantage when it becomes my turn to enter the workforce.

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I’M READY FOR THE AGE OF HYPERTRANSPARENCY.

ARE YOU?

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Image CreditsAll images are licensed under “free to use, share or modify” and can be found from Google Advanced Image Search. Images are sourced from sites including Flickr, Wikimedia and pixabay. All of these images are licensed to be distributed and modified in a non-commercial setting.

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References and Articles Used http://www.businessinsider.com/your-tweets-are-more-important-than-your-rsum-2013-2http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/04/your_future_employer_is_watchi.htmlhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-gulati/put-forth-your-virtual-be_b_1508067.htmlhttp://redtape.nbcnews.com/_news/2007/03/13/6346015-the-penalty-a-digital-scarlet-letter?litehttp://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/career-advice/five-ways-to-be-a-smart-social-media-user-in-your-job-hunt/article7195188/http://www.forbes.com/sites/danschawbel/2011/02/28/the-reputation-economy/http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2013/04/16/how-social-media-can-help-or-hurt-your-job-search/http://yoursocialmediascore.com/downloads/b_repmanagement.pdfhttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/magazine/25privacy-t2.html?pagewanted=allhttp://www.forbes.com/sites/meghancasserly/2012/06/14/social-media-and-the-job-hunt-sqeaky-clean-facebook-profiles/2/http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/5/prweb10716368.htmhttp://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/02/15/twitterviews-resumes/1919305/http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203750404577173031991814896.html