Do you have a MySpace Page? 
I don’t and I don’t have any real plans to have one. Not because I am against MySpace, not because I am trying to keep potential employers from learning about who I am – I just don’t have time to build another social community right now, but I might sometime soon. My 16 year old sister has a MySpace page. My 15 year old step-son has one. We have a witch in our town – she has one too (you can see it here), but that’s a whole other story.
I really support how MySpace has fostered an environment of self-expression and I totally support the undercurrent of a revolution that you feel every time you hear how many more users the site has. Ross Levinsohn, President of News Corp’s Fox Interactive Media unit (see his MySpace page here) recently said,
“Kids don’t have a way to express themselves, and that’s led to the rise of social networking…It’s all about getting them to interact and express themselves. We are starting to take a different mindset. We don’t want them to sit back and be passive.”
Right on. No More Boring Vanilla.
Sites like this are increasingly enabling people to develop their personal brand, but they are also being used as a window into what I am calling your ‘candidate brand’. We keep hearing the references to young adults missing out on job opportunities because of what recruiters are finding out about them on the internet. MySpace and other tools are being used to target and/or research job candidates. Unfortunely, recruiters are often shocked at what they find. It seems that one’s personal brand doesn’t always bolster their candidate brand. According to a recent article by Alan Finder in The New York Times,
“Many counselors have been urging students to review their pages on Facebook and other sites, removing photographs or text that might be inappropriate to show to their grandmother or potential employers. Counselors also encourage students to apply settings on Facebook that can significantly limit access to their pages.
But it is not clear whether many students are following the advice. “I think students have the view that Facebook is their space and that the adult world doesn’t know about it,” said Mark Smith, director of the career center at Washington University in St. Louis. “But the adult world is starting to come in.”
The adult world? Or the Real and Authentic World? The Canadian HeadHunter over at The Recruiting Animal in a post here liked Julian’s snippet from our recent project building a corporate recruitment blog:
“My favorite moment from blog training? When a recruiter explained that she didn’t see how she could possibly write on the company blog when all she’s done for the last year is tell her teenage son to avoid posting on blogs for fear of sexual predators. That was one question I didn’t anticipate.”
Do we as a culture really want companies, and thereby the employees that make them what they are, to be as vanilla and safe as your average gated community on a golf course? Is this what builds a great company? Are we too afraid that we will see something about their “lifestyle” that isn’t safe or vanilla? So much of our culture, especially corporate culture, is just devoid of any real character. Everyday it seems that there is an article or a post out there that points to how we need job candidates to only have “safe” representations of themselves on the web, we want safe and ‘professional’ blog content in order to have it be ad supported and we need corporate blog policies to keep ourselves from making an ass out of you and me.
But I digress….just like Employer Brands, Candidate brands should be built on truth. Employer Branding is not supposed to be about what you think job seekers want to hear – it’s about displaying the realities of your organization and getting to its essence. More and more the next generation of job seekers are willing to give that to us – their essence – their personal brand – but we are trying to squash them for it. Instead of trying to quell the revolution that is happening on social networking sites – employers should embrace it and participate openly in online communities to get out the company’s value proposition and message to connect with talented job candidates. Like it or not, it’s the *real* content on these user generated pages that is the gold.
From an article in The Economist:
“Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones, two British academics, eschew the notion that effective bosses can be constructed piecemeal. Their implicit message is that bosses are born, or at least made before they delve into books on management. Rather than suggesting that high-quality leaders can be constructed from what they dismiss as an “amalgam of traits”, they stress that there are “no universal leadership characteristics”. The talent that the pair thinks most vital is “authenticity”.
After 25 years spent observing well-regarded chief executives and good managers further down the ladder, the authors conclude that those who are true to characteristics they already possess make the best bosses. Their message to the aspiring high-flyer is “be yourself”, have a lot of self-knowledge and be comfortable with who you are. Identikit executives hiding behind the latest management fad, ambitious role players, time-servers and office politicians may manage to creep to the top. But Messrs Jones and Goffee insist that those they seek to lead will soon find them out. Authenticity cannot be faked, they say, and a little eccentricity won’t hurt either. The authors approvingly cite Mr Branson’s casual style and endearing difference from the norm that his followers appreciate.”
Maybe Recruiters shouldn’t go looking for ‘dirt’ about candidates online unless they are willing to do that for their current employees – they might be surprised at what they find.
EXCELER8ion is where Shannon and Julian Seery Gude write on Social Media & Recruiting, Digital Marketing, Technology, Internet Business, and other Geekiness. 
12 comments ↓
“Are we too afraid that we will see something about their “lifestyle” that isn’t safe or vanilla? So much of our culture, especially corporate culture, is just devoid of any real character.”- Well said.
So glad someone protested. You’ve got to have the maturity to contextualize what someone writes in college or highschool. People at that age have a right to explore and a right to expression. If you’re going to go looking- at least look at that information authentically; not from a moral high ground.
Courage and authenticity are the same thing. Courage is the essential leadership quality plus talents and skills.
A person who is authentic to her negative characteristics is not going to be a great boss. However, if the will to authenticity is thoroughgoing enough the courage it entails will be the mettle that makes a leader.
Thanks for the comment Astha – great blog BTW.
It is surprising to me that there aren’t more protesting voices out there on this topic – but it is highly complicated. We love blogs and social networking for allowing real and authentic conversations but we are weary of them because they document your thoughts in a more permanent way.
I have mixed feelings about where the line is between acceptable and unacceptable self-expression that won’t ruin your public persona. Why is it fine for Sir Richard Branson, a Knight no less, to talk about quitting school as a teen, illegally smuggling albums past his government’s tax system, or about being a thief as a kid without being judged? He wrote about it in a very permanent way in his autobiographies – but that isn’t going keep him from getting funding for his next big idea. When is it right and when is it wrong to judge based on what people are willing to put out there about themselves?
What I protest too most about this is the taking of this material out of context to make hiring decisions. Not giving someone a job because they have a MySpace page touting that they won the “most inebriated award” in their Frat at college is ridiculous. They did not walk into their interview drunk, touting that they won the “Most Inebriated” award in school a few months ago. What is on MySpace is “public”, but I would also counter that the information isn’t public for the world to see whether they want to see it or not.
We’re not talking about people who have openly deceived a prospective employer and lied on their resume or covered up an arrest. We are talking about people that are just out there honestly talking about their life for social interaction and entertainment. People are not flaunting the info in the face of their prospective employer – this is not the image that they are going to their interview with. Employers have to SEARCH and go DIGGING for this information. Are they willing to do this same sort of uncovering for their current employees to help them decide if they’re worth retaining?
“When you go in search of honey you must expect to be stung by bees.”
– Joseph Joubert
[...] The Exceler8ion Blog takes you deep into the battle between the you you’re dying to be and your the you you have to be for the sake of your career. [...]
I totally agree with your point that candidates should be allowed to be themselves and express themselves authentically. However, I think the problem with MySpace (and the MySpace generation) is that they aren’t really free to be themselves. Posts about their sexual exploits, drinking or drug use isn’t meant to show they are different – it is menat to show that they are the same as all the other kids posting the same thing. Even though they are expressing themselves, I’m not sure they are really being true to themselves.
In addition, we all have to live with the fact that the Internet has made this into a small world. I liken it to if a candidate knew that a large number of a company’s employees hung out at a particular bar and the night before an interview that candidate went there, got wasted, took their top off, danced on the bar and then passed out. The candidate could very well show up to the interview the next day and have people that saw them living it up at the bar last night as interviewers. It’s a new world and a new genreation, but they still need to show judgement.
I think the point that the guidance counselors need to make is not – you should edit your profile – but that you should really think about whether or not your profile really describes you. If you call yourself “CrazyBitch” on MySpace – is that really how you see yourself?
That’s just my two cents – but from my perspective I see a lot more sameness than orginality on MySpace.
Hi Laura – thanks for the comment! All good points…and you are right – there are many unoriginal sheep on MySpace that are trying to be what they think their online friends want them to be. They have developed online personas that might not truly reflect who they are…reminds me a little of the geeks that used to play Dungeons and Dragons. Hey wait I’m a geek….
Anyway – MySpace has become mainstream fast – I think people are sick of being told how they are supposed to be. When you look at American – many have the perspective that you can go ahead and be crazy or promiscuous or gay, but just don’t tell us about it and certainly don’t put it in writing (or photos or vlogs).
I protest that it is arbitrary and possibly inaccurate information that gets to be used without the consent of the candidate to make hiring decisions. MySpace is about connecting with your peers and social entertainment – if you choose to not be original and stick with the crowd, well that is your right – but the point is that it is YOUR SPACE.
The site is not called MyResume. It was never created to be a place where you advertised your “Candidate Brand.” Candidates should have rights too and not have recruiters digging for dirt so that companies can seemingly reduce their “risks” and protect themselves from making “bad hires”.
Your job as a candidate is to prove that you have the ability to do the job that an employer needs and that is done through your work history and your accomplishments and even competency tests – not what you do when you’re off the clock.
[...] My recent post regarding the problems that social networking sites like MySpace are creating for job candidates shows that there is definitely a large divide between those that say the issue is overblown and those that say – “write only what it is OK for grandma to see”, otherwise it may come back to bite you. [...]
I think at the core of this is sorting out what is peripheral and what is relevant.
Whether the candidate cross dressed in college, got wasted, or wrote utter crap (which as Laura pointed out might just have been to fit in)—all of this is irrelevant to his/her performance on the job. Just like our color, creed, religion and orientation are irrelevant to whether we make good contributive citizens in our society.
We have a tendency as people to get embroiled in the peripheral and more visible aspects of an individual while assessing them.
The relevant questions are whether the person has the skill, ability and knowledge to perform the job. And twenty to one their personal space is not going to tell you how well they code, manage or organize.
If material available on a person raises doubts in your mind about their integrity and honesty—be thorough in the references. Get recent, reliable data rather than speculating.
But please do not let peripheral characteristics get in the way.
Thanks for focusing on the issue Shannon- there should be more discussions on this!
[...] So what does this have to do with recruiting? Well, I’m no pretender, and I don’t like to spout off my opinions on issues that I don’t really have a deep understanding of. So, after the discussion that ensued from my recent post frowning upon making hiring decisions based on the content of a MySpace page – it seemed really wrong to explore the issue any further without going “inside”. [...]
[...] MySpaced – Def: when a candidate looses an opportunity at a job offer because of the content on their MySpace page. Antonym: Dooced. [...]
[...] On a personal level, I side with Shannon who disagrees with the “vanilla-izing” of our corporations and said this: “Maybe Recruiters shouldn’t go looking for ‘dirt’ about candidates online unless they are willing to do that for their current employees – they might be surprised at what they find.” [...]
[...] What Next for Recruiting & Technology? This is Week 1 of the Recruiting Blog Swap. My guest blogger this week is Mike Taylor. Take it away, Mike!Hardly a week goes by without the launch of a new technology, but what effect is new technology having on Recruiting?According to Online Marketing experts 2006 is the year of the video. Although online video is not new (it has been around for a number of years) it is only recently that it has been possible to reduce the file size significantly without affecting the quality of the moving picture. (Mikerochip) Eight Reasons Recruiters Never Call You This is part of the Recruiting.com Blog Swap by: Jim Stroud ? 2006 1. Too many responses and not enough time. One advertised job can bring as many as three hundred responses in less than three days. It is logistically impossible for any one recruiter to reply personally to every applicant. Jobseeker Advice: Network your way into the company. This is the best way to circumvent the tidal wave of resumes recruiters face daily. (StlRecruiting) Assurance – Get Solid I like tennis. Started learning it as a teenager with my dad. There was one thing in particular I noticed as we practiced and my shots and volleys got wilder or more controlled and purposeful. It was my feet. When I was moving my feet about trying to get into position and then moving again and shifting (I began to call it “waffling”), my shots had little accuracy. I’d lose the volley. But when I firmly planted my feet and stood in solid, square position, my shots went exactly where I wanted and I’d win the point. (Yvonne LaRose, CAC on David Perry’s Guerilla Job Hunt) Should your outside-of-work-online persona be considered by employers?A quick little intro for those of you tuning in to the Big Bad Recruiting Blog Swap… My name is Tod Hilton and I will be your host for this post. What I am: a software developer at Microsoft and a bunch of other things [father, husband, gamer, snowboarder, etc.]. What I?m not: a recruiter or hiring manager, although I do interview candidates and give the infamous ?hire? or ?no-hire? recommendation. I am going to segue off of David?s previous post, Students, careers & social networking, and give you my thoughts on the murky waters of… Should a person?s personal, ?outside-of-work? persona be considered by an employer? My answer: yes and no.
I know, you?re probably thinking ?what a typical ambiguous answer from yet another corporate drone,? but you couldn?t be further from the truth. (HireCalling) Under PressureToday we welcome our first guest blogger from the now famous Recruiting Blog Swap. Beth Carvin is the CEO of Nobscot Corporation, and you can learn more about her here, here and here. Why do managers give interviews where they stare off into space for five minutes? Is it because they are creepy, and working at that company is like working in a house of ghouls on Halloween? That might be an applicant’s impression but not necessarily the case. More likely, the reason for the bizarre interview behavior is that the manager learned somewhere along the line that they should test applicants by simulating a stressful situation (It’s All About the Experience) Don?t Leave Home Without ItThis post is the first in a series for the Blog Swap. Here, Claudia Faust who is a founding partner at ImprovedExperience.com, takes a view on ?Possibility Recruiting?:Don?t Leave Home Without It?Did it work? It doesn?t matter. What matters is that the possibility exists that it could.? Amitai GivertzThe optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; the pessimist fears that this is true.? James Branch CabellI love the idea of Possibility Recruiting because ? well, let?s be honest here, I am a die-hard optimist. This gets me into trouble occasionally (well, more often than that, since I?m being honest). However, I still like being this way. So, thinking of recruiting as exploring what is possible? Works for me.That?s the simple part. It gets more complicated when I admit that Possibility and Optimism aren?t exactly the same thing. Oh, they?re compatible, no doubt ? but in a distant-cousin sort of way. Possibility is potential; it is a concept that is not yet verified. Optimism, on the other hand, is a general feeling that everything is going to turn out just fine. When taken to an extreme, Optimism beats a path to the doorway of Complete Denial. You know, that place where natural laws (like gravity and physics) don?t apply to you. (Recruitomatic) Louise Fletcher?s Take On Online Personal BrandsEXCELER8ion is participating in a ?BlogSwap? with some of the best recruiting community Bloggers. Here is the first terrific guest post from Louise Fletcher of the Blue Sky Resumes Blog: As the owner of a career marketing business, I?ve been following the debate about My Space pages and online personal branding with interest.On a personal level, I side with Shannon who disagrees with the ?vanilla-izing? of our corporations and said this: ?Maybe Recruiters shouldn?t go looking for ?dirt? about candidates online unless they are willing to do that for their current employees – they might be surprised at what they find.? But on a practical level, I think (a) research of potential employees online will continue and (b) companies will start looking for dirt about existing employees (if they?re not doing it already.) (Exceller8ion) The Single Most Important Interview Driver This is the my first guest entry of the Blog Swap courtesy of Dennis Smith, Sr. Manager, Talent Acquisition for T-Mobile USA. I have become a big fan of Dennis and his blog. Welcome Dennis?I laughed when I read Paul?s post http://www.mnheadhunter.com/mh/2006/06/mn_headhunter_n.html from June 29th . He said, ??if I were a professional juggler I would be fired. Of the eight balls that should be in the air five of them always seem to be on the ground.? (MN Headhunter) The Elevator Speech: Marketing U. By Ilya CantorI was recently asked by a job seeker to give a “formula” for constructing the 60-second elevator speech. If only it was that easy or practical.The problem with the 60-second shpiel is very much related to the limited time you are allowed. Having dealt with journalists and marketing folks for much of my of my career, I can tell you why good creative people are so valuable. It?s incredibly difficult to hone a message to 60-seconds, let alone 30-seconds as is sometimes required. It is much easier to write a 200 word ?summary? than a concise 25 word overview.Whether you are delivering your message in person or in writing, you should set the tone up front. By this I mean a concise headline (and read The Ugly Truth About Recruiters.) (Marketing Headhunter) Blogswapping with….College RecruiterThis post is part of the Recruiting.com Blog Swap.Many thanks to Steve Rothberg, of CollegeRecruiter.com fame, for being a guest contributor.As a guest contributor to the Career Builders Blog, I would like to extend my thanks to Dennis Smith and the other good folks at T-Mobile for affording me this opportunity. By way of introduction, Dennis and I met on-line a few months ago through our blogging efforts and face-to-face at a recruiting conference in Las Vegas where we both sat on a panel and discussed why and how recruiters should blog. This Career Builders Blog is one of the best recruiting blogs and, as a result, I have a tremendous amount of respect for the path that Dennis and his colleagues are paving for others. I am the President and Founder of CollegeRecruiter.com, a career site that focuses on helping college students and recent graduates find entry level jobs and internships .One of my passions is learning about alternative ways of educating our population, whether that is through on-line schools or other methods. I recently learned about StudyCell, which makes educational software for cell phones. Some 10,000 people have now downloaded its mobile products, so it is in its infancy but approaching critical mass. StudyCell offers pre-made mobile flashcard decks for studying a variety of subjects (languages, math, history, etc.), in addition to its system for creating individualized flashcards on its web site for download to students? cell phones. StudyCell takes advantage of the way young people use cell phones in their daily lives?in the halls, on the bus, during brief windows of time?to help them memorize words, facts, and concepts and test their new skills. (Career Builders) Ethics ‘N Viva ‘N Me or Squaring The Ethical Circle I came to the blogswap, I saw The Desk, and somehow conquered my fear of combining the subjects of ethics, hiring and China. And then linking it all back to the US. Somehow. So let’s start with a little understatement. In China, the ethical environment is a tad different from the US. Sorry, I said little, didn’t I?. Well, maybe very different. It’s not so much that the ethics in China are less, or more than in the US. That would be far too politically incorrect to say. But we have to face the fact that the underlying legal infrastructure in China, i.e., the written rules and regulations, are relatively newly written and very much a work in progress. -This impacts the issue of ethics strongly, and it may serve to underline the value of the labor laws in the US by illustrating what it would be like without them. (By Frank Mulligan in The Desk) Blogswap Week One: When Top-of-Mind is a HeadacheThe first blogswap posting comes courtesy of Amitai Givertz of Amitai Givertz’s Recruitomatic Blog. Branding has come a long way since it was first used to mark cattle and criminals. It has evolved from the scarring of symbols on flesh to the calculated deployment of symbols for the molding of minds. Where once the medium for branding was soft tissue that resulted in searing pain, nowadays branding draws upon every conceivable means to stimulate our senses with promises of pleasure, success, and instant gratification. Branding is big business ? big and complicated. For larger employers in particular, management of their employer brand as a subset of their total communications strategy should not be placed in the hands of novices. Rather, it should be outsourced to experts who understand how to fabricate beauty from the imperfections in the body corporate. Advertising agencies ? excuse me, full-service recruitment communications and HR solutions partners ? have become the high priests of employer branding, dazzling in their use of magic to transform the ordinary into the extra-ordinary. (David Kippen) Coming Soon: American Strategic Management Institute (ASMI)Talent Management SummitJuly 24-26Boston, MA$1995Register OnRec Expo 2006 12-13 September 2006Donald E. Stephens Convention CenterChicagoRegister ER Expo Fall ConferenceSeptember 12 – 14Hollywood Beach, FL$1,495Register NAPEO Professional Employer & Marketplace 2006September 11-13Boca Raton Resort & ClubBoca Raton, FL AESC Researchers & Associates Summit September 21st, 2006 Tate ModernBanksideLondon, United Kingdom email cdavies@aesc.org for more info 2006 Healthcare Staffing Summit September 19-21, 2006Loews Coronado Bay ResortSan Diego, CA$1,285Register 2006 Strategic HR Conference October 4-6, 2006 Westin Kierland ResortPhoenix, Arizona Human Resource Executive?s 9th Annual HR Technology? ConferenceOct. 4-6, 2006Navy Pier in Chicago, IL $!095Register Nat’l Association of Personnel Services (NAPS)Recruiting LifeOct 11-15San Francisco, CA$999Register 2006 SHRM Workplace Diversity Conference October 16-18, 2006Century Plaza Hotel and SpaLos Angeles, California 9th Annual Talent Acquisition & Staffing SummitOctober 16-19 2006Renaissance Atlanta Downtown Hotel$2099More InfoRegister Hunt Scanlon Advisors present”Defining Leaders”New York cityOctober 18 – 20, 2006New York Palace HR.com’s Employers of Excellence 2006 October 25 – 27, 2006Red Rock ResortLas Vegas, NevadaRegister Kennedy Information presentsRecruiting 2006November 8-9, 2006New York City, NY$1,195Register Bangalore HR Summit 2006December 15 & 16, 2006Leela Palace, Airport Road, Bangalore-1,India$250Learn More Got News? Send us your company news, personnel changes, placements, and other tidbits of interest. News you’d like to see covered that we haven’t? Let us know. Don’t forget to check out the blogs on bert. [...]
Leave a Comment