Abstract
This paper explores three published article that reports how career and businesses are interrelated with social networking sites. The articles are varying in their field from individual to professional companies. Tribble (2008) suggests that one can easily find more job and interviews on social networking sites then search engines. Other articles describes many employers use their employees' and their interviewees' personal profiles for background check and ban of these sites during work. This paper mentioned an incident about an aspiring teacher turn into nanny because of her photo on a social site. This paper also examines how social networking's definitions are changed by their users as they needed and how they affect their professional lives.
Social Networking and their Various Kinds of Effects on Professional Life
Introduction
The 21st century's great and popular topic is social networking. Few sites are becoming part of our daily normal life. As a college student, I decided to investigate how much these sites can affect one's career or how businesses using social networking sites.
In my view, these sites are not just to connect with friends and family, these sites can be used as a great tool to grow business, find jobs, interviews and increase the networking within your field. These sites provide a wide range of people from various fields and they are from across many cities and states. One can easily find a job which fulfills his dreams on his terms and conditions. Whereas big or small companies create groups, web pages, forums and communities on the most popular sites like Face book, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Blogger or Word press. They post latest updates, vacancies and necessary information about their companies. Numbers of business firms do advertise through these sites for their products and brands. So that I believe, social networking has many positive effects on a person's career and business.
However, as every coin has two sides, social networking has also negative side. There are many cases of firing employees because their posts or photos on the networking sites, or doing social networking while they are on workplace. Another aspect of these sites is used by recruiters to check the background of their future employee or interviewee.
Summary and Respond of the three Articles
From The New Times, my first article shows that social networking sites are helpful and crucial in bad economy. In Tribble (2008), the purpose is to use social websites as new tool of networking in business. Especially, the author's main argument is that job seekers should not avoid social networking sites; they can helpful to get your desirable interviews, jobs, and recommendation letters from the employers. Tribble gave the example of Mr. So from Calif., whose job was going to end, but in the less than 30 days he found new job with more salary since he signed up for social networking site, LinkedIn. Users make profile, upload resume and photo on this site. This site provides connections to add others in your contact list. The most influential idea is to get the really old contact in touch by just few clicks of the mouse. One can get back to meet past employers and colleagues easily, no matter where they are or what they are doing. Tribble gave the example of Mr. Lunn, who lost the contact over the years, but thanks to the website such as LinkedIn, which found out many of him past contact from its database, which are very useful to him now.
There are more than 85 million active users of face book and the fastest growing group of 25 year old or older people. Where, LinkedIn has one new networker every two seconds or 25 million users and adding 1.2 million at rate of every month. Many users out there, that does not mean that you add each and every person. One should make his own circle of people, who may successful and helpful to him in bad times. Users should make their connections strategically and maintain the quality of the connections. (Tribble 2008) From your contacts or connections your social image is created among your networks or friends on the websites. Face book is more informal way connects with others, where LinkedIn is more formal. Face book features classified ads in the marketplace, job hunting applications like Jobster. The only over sharing of personal info can be harmful. The best suggestion would be "Keep the social separate from the networking." (Tribble 2008)
My second article is based on the studies of employers who check the background of the interviewee or job applicant by looking at unprofessional websites like Face book, MySpace, Blogger. This article showed that your personal profile and data can be checked by future employee, one should not post anything that harm his in future career because it made the first impression bad, which is so important to get any job. Palank cited that often employers deny of searching or looking up at job applicant's profile, but they do it all the time. For example of Ziggs named website put results of their users on the top 20 search engines' results. There are some kinds of websites which even demonstrate the judgmental skill of applicant and insight idea into profiles, and employer can get it anytime on the web. Although there are privacy settings are provided by websites, they do not give guarantee that you data will not be use or given to anyone.
This article reinforced my thoughts on use of social networking for job purposes. On one hand, it supports that if your profile is good and impressive then your chances for jobs are increasing, on other hand if employer found anything inappropriate about you, it will take down your image in the eye of employer and your chances to get job will be very less. Palank reported that "Of the employers who said they use Web sites, 41.2 percent reported occasional use, 35.3 percent said their use was infrequent and 7.4 percent called it standard practice." This statistical data supports that recruiters uses social websites to check the background of job applicants. It is challenging for users to post and to be on social websites, when their employers are out there to search the information about them. Whereas, some institutions made it compulsory for applicants to go through background check and they would use Google or any similar website to verify the information given by applicants. (Palank 2006)
When it comes to Google, there are tons of information out there, you can not trust on any source easily. Credibility and reliability are the most important keys of any article. The article is credible and reliable because Palank is professional reporter for newspapers like The New York Times, The Washington Times, and Dow Jones. She gave the statistical data and cited views of executive of social websites and employers. Survey is performed on more than 254 employers by The National Association of college and employers. In the same way, Tribble is also reporter for well known newspapers. She gave the statistical data and the example of users who have benefited from social networking.
Final the most important article is the case of "Drunken Pirate", which became benchmark for future. An aspiring school teacher ended up in being nanny because she has posted a photo on a social website, MySpace. Stacy Snyder was a student at Millersville University and she was about to graduate. But the administration found her photo with pirate and hate and a plastic cup in hand, captioned as "drunken pirate" which is encouraging underage drinking, so they denied her degree. (Rouge 2007) This is an eye-opening case for every employee and students. This incident shows everyone that future dreams can be crushed because some photos and posts.
Discussion
I have learned from small rules to big ethics and professional skills after the research. Currently, this issue has been rising more than past years with upcoming new graduates and employees. Social networking site is colliding person's professional world with personal activities. Users are not protected under the federal law. Employers can track down any activity of person, they want to hire or working for them or part of their institution. People can draw a line between sharing and over sharing info. Once there is data or post updated, it will remain like that forever, even though in future someone can find out. Students and employee should be more careful and think about their career first when they post something unprofessional. By putting some unprofessional posts or comments you end up your future career, job opportunities or current position. It is proved by a case of "drunken pirate."
My views are changed after researched on this issue. Previously I was thinking that social networking can help a lot to job seekers and companies. Likewise, Tribble gave examples of people who have great jobs because of social networking site such as LinkedIn. It is the easiest and quickest way to reach the most favorites employers and for employers best way to find about employee. However, the dangers of losing job are more than the benefits of getting a job. As Palank has said in her article, numbers of employers look up at Websites, before they hire people for jobs. There are many cases about firing employee at workplace, for socializing during the work on the internet or for badmouthing about their boss. From now my view is, one should proceed with caution when they are on websites of social networking and finding a job.
Despite of easy way to find a job and many benefits, social networking sites put you in endanger because employer can access the personal data. The main purpose behind social networking sites is to make connection and interact with others, but it should not cross the line of ethics, morals and professionalism.
References
Crosman, P. (2009, Nov. 1). Anti-Social Networking. Wall Street & Technology, p. 9.
Palank, J. (2006, July 17). Face it:'Book' no secret to employers; Social sites used as background
check. The Washington Times. p. A01.
Rouge, B. (2007, June). Denied Teaching Degree; she sues Millersville.
Women in Higher Education, p. 4.
Tibble, S. J. (2008, Aug. 14). The Social Network as a Career Safety Net.
The New York Times. p. 6.
This paper mentioned an incident about an aspiring teacher turn into nanny because of her photo on a social site.
In most of the abstract, you used the present tense, so you should stick with the present tense here:
This paper mentions....
...aspiring teacher who is forced to become a nanny because...
I decided to investigate how much these sites can affect one's career or how businesses using social networking sites.---In this first paragraph, you are establishing the scope of the paper. Now that you have written it, I think you should ADD A SENTENCE to the end of that first paragraph and let it be a sentence that really captures the most meaningful message/theme that results from your study.
When you cite a source, put the parenthetical reference INSIDE the punctuation:
website to verify the information given by applicants (Palank, 2006). ----Also, notice that I added a comma. You seem to be using APA, so use a comma in between the name and year.
You are doing very well! I think the important thing is to add sentences to the end of a few of the paragraphs, especially the conclusion -- sentences that "wrap up" an important point you want to make.
Challenge yourself: Can you express the main idea of the whole essay in a single sentence? In a single word?
:-)
