lol.
http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/career-articles-5_lifestyle_activities_that_can_get_you_fired-427
This brings to mind the INHERENT trap in internet-based social networks such as Facebook, Myspace, Hi5, and possibly even LinkedIn...more than ever, your boss or potential employer can easily find ammunition with which to sink your career before it even sailed out the harbour!
I personally advocate people having a split personality on the web, so to speak. This does not mean pretend to be something you are not, but it does mean to be smart about what you are doing...
Like it or not, humans are by NATURE judgmental creatures, our minds can't deal with a infinite amount of uncategorized data...so we must prioritize and categorize every sensation and perception so that we are not reinventing the wheel every time we come across the same thing or similar things. So by nature, no matter how what you do in your private time should be of zero import to the company you work or want to work for, in reality, knowing about your wild partying every weekend and seeing the language you use with friends and such are great ways to come up with reasons to promote, or not lay off, the OTHER person whose antics are not visible to the public. Even with LinkedIn, if you don't want your current job terminated the second they realize you are scouting for a new one...it could be job suicide to announce to a network geared towards finding you a job...that you are looking for one! It all becomes like war games, with covert and overt strategies that may look NOTHING like each other, but fail at one and you could lose not just the battle, but the war! I would even go so far as to block individuals who have meant you ill in the past, before even interacting with them on that site. LinkedIn doesn't presently allow you to block anyone, unfortunately, but Facebook for example proposes people you might know based on mutual friends...if you had or are going through a horrible divorce and the ex pops up, go ahead and block him or her because they may be able to keep up with your life through mutual friends postings on your wall!
This is also a reason why the first step you should take as soon as you sign up for any site, is establishing exactly what you need to do to keep private the information that you need not display for the entire Web, but just a select few. Facebook and Myspace have popular options that allows the public to see only your face and possibly your location and last log-in date. You can set your privacy options so that only your friends on your profile's friend list can see all your information, and Facebook takes it a step further and allows you to restrict individual people from how much of your profile they have access to. So they can be your friend but maybe you don't want but a certain few family members on the list to be able to see your pictures labelled 'private'? No problem.
Security features are going to become a major issue as more people get connected, and the inevitable hackers and scam artists, shady characters, and internet stalkers (which is not necessarily romantic, I have been stalked by flat out evil-minded, idle, jealous people who simply trail you around the internet trying to find something to discredit you with!) latch onto the bandwagon.
You should know the culture of the company as best you can. If you work for a legal firm and you are the only person that does a particular job in the office...they may not want to know that you stunt sportbikes in your free time. The world use to be a great unknown, now it is becoming one big pot of TOO MUCH INFORMATION (TMI)!!!!
P.S. Is it me or as companies become more money-hungry and bloodthirsty, with corruption scandals being uncovered left and right...they are trying to find the perfect employee, which will never exist? It's like men who sit around playing the field and wrecking perfectly good relationships or potential relationships because they spend their lives in a futile hunt for the PERFECT woman, who only exists in their fantasies and possibly on tv!
Be careful out there!
http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/career-articles-5_lifestyle_activities_that_can_get_you_fired-427
This brings to mind the INHERENT trap in internet-based social networks such as Facebook, Myspace, Hi5, and possibly even LinkedIn...more than ever, your boss or potential employer can easily find ammunition with which to sink your career before it even sailed out the harbour!
I personally advocate people having a split personality on the web, so to speak. This does not mean pretend to be something you are not, but it does mean to be smart about what you are doing...
Like it or not, humans are by NATURE judgmental creatures, our minds can't deal with a infinite amount of uncategorized data...so we must prioritize and categorize every sensation and perception so that we are not reinventing the wheel every time we come across the same thing or similar things. So by nature, no matter how what you do in your private time should be of zero import to the company you work or want to work for, in reality, knowing about your wild partying every weekend and seeing the language you use with friends and such are great ways to come up with reasons to promote, or not lay off, the OTHER person whose antics are not visible to the public. Even with LinkedIn, if you don't want your current job terminated the second they realize you are scouting for a new one...it could be job suicide to announce to a network geared towards finding you a job...that you are looking for one! It all becomes like war games, with covert and overt strategies that may look NOTHING like each other, but fail at one and you could lose not just the battle, but the war! I would even go so far as to block individuals who have meant you ill in the past, before even interacting with them on that site. LinkedIn doesn't presently allow you to block anyone, unfortunately, but Facebook for example proposes people you might know based on mutual friends...if you had or are going through a horrible divorce and the ex pops up, go ahead and block him or her because they may be able to keep up with your life through mutual friends postings on your wall!
This is also a reason why the first step you should take as soon as you sign up for any site, is establishing exactly what you need to do to keep private the information that you need not display for the entire Web, but just a select few. Facebook and Myspace have popular options that allows the public to see only your face and possibly your location and last log-in date. You can set your privacy options so that only your friends on your profile's friend list can see all your information, and Facebook takes it a step further and allows you to restrict individual people from how much of your profile they have access to. So they can be your friend but maybe you don't want but a certain few family members on the list to be able to see your pictures labelled 'private'? No problem.
Security features are going to become a major issue as more people get connected, and the inevitable hackers and scam artists, shady characters, and internet stalkers (which is not necessarily romantic, I have been stalked by flat out evil-minded, idle, jealous people who simply trail you around the internet trying to find something to discredit you with!) latch onto the bandwagon.
You should know the culture of the company as best you can. If you work for a legal firm and you are the only person that does a particular job in the office...they may not want to know that you stunt sportbikes in your free time. The world use to be a great unknown, now it is becoming one big pot of TOO MUCH INFORMATION (TMI)!!!!
P.S. Is it me or as companies become more money-hungry and bloodthirsty, with corruption scandals being uncovered left and right...they are trying to find the perfect employee, which will never exist? It's like men who sit around playing the field and wrecking perfectly good relationships or potential relationships because they spend their lives in a futile hunt for the PERFECT woman, who only exists in their fantasies and possibly on tv!
Be careful out there!
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