Tina Myles Presentation from YouToo 2010 at Kent State
1. How to Avoid Common Social Media Pitfalls and Improve your Online Image Presented by: Tina Myles, Esq., SPHR Director Human Resources, InfoCision Management Corporation
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Hinweis der Redaktion
Google yourself. Make sure your presenting a consistent image. Differentiate yourself from the competition.
First things first, know what your online image is. Google yourself- you might be surprised what comes up. In considering building your online image, do the following: -- get a personal (not work) email address; use this address for all social media accounts; -- update your resume. You can copy/ paste it into LinkedIn profile. Also, this way it is ready to share; -- Take a professional photo. Add to accounts like Linkedin. -- Choose sites carefully. -- Promote your accounts. Cross-link accounts. -- Grow your network. Make your presence known.
In today’s world, you need all the help you can get when searching for a new position. Social media is a great way to connect with people you might not have had the opportunity to meet in person. It can also help you to “get the word” that your available for work and communicate in a very specific way what your skill set is.
If your experience on their resume, LinkedIn, and Twitter profiles are at odds with each other, this can make employers shy away because they aren’t getting a consistent image of the person and their experience. As a HR professional who has conducted hundreds of interviews, consistency is key when assessing candidates. When you fill in your hobbies, put in something about your professional life that is a hobby as well. (ie: application developer who liked to create Droid applications as a hobby) This group is professional Communicators- make sure this is coming across in your profiles and information.
There are people who will give you conflicting advice on this topic. In my experience, these two areas should be somewhat separate. For one, when you want to be able to “unplug” from work, it’s very difficult to do so if your constantly getting facebook updates from co workers or posting to a company linked in discussion page or blog. Tip from Matt Feltrup: always put a drink down (no matter where your at) before a picture is taken.
Don’t connect with everyone. Quality is more important than quantity. When considering adding someone as a connection, ask yourself: How can the person help me? How can I help them?
This is a great way to learn about opportunities available in your field. It is also a great way to learn about trends in your field that you can potentially talk about in interviews. A caveat: it’s not necessary to respond to every post someone sends and post only when you know or have direct experience with a topic.
Example– County. While everyone has frustrations in the workplace, it’s not appropriate to air these using social media. For one, you never know who is looking, especially if you post it from work and two, it ultimately makes you look bad- not the company or co worker your frustrated with. Most companies now have policies concerning computer and network usage. Most companies claim somewhere (usually in their handbook) that they own the network, the computer and everything that is transmitted on it ( yes, for the most part this is legal). This means that when defamatory comments are posted about a company, they have the right to discipline the person who said it. There are additional risks for the person posting, including: libel and defamation law suites revealing copyrighted material, can result in violation of Non Disclosure agreements harassment discrimination and retaliation disclosure of proprietary information damage to your reputation as an employee
Be really careful what you tweet. You don’t know who might read it. Tweets show up in Google search. For instance – Kansas City Chiefs running back Larry Johnson last season made a tweet that was offensive to homosexuals. It got him released from the team a few weeks later and left the fan base viewing him in a negative light. And this was a fan base that had loved and supported him for many, many years. Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Santonio Holmes recently tweeted that he “waked and baked,” which is a reference to using marijuana, which is of course against the rules for an NFL player. Because of this and some other trouble he got in, Holmes was just given a four game suspension for this season and traded to the New York Jets because the Steelers thought he was too much trouble. So for these two guys, you could say that making a social media mistake drastically altered their careers. There are many, many other examples. And with many of these social media platforms there is no delete, because even if you delete the post after five minutes, you still don’t know how many people saw it.
The temptation when you are job searching is to spend time looking at job postings, uploading your resume to apply, talking to contacts or posting your job search tribulations on your Facebook page. Just remember, your work commuter and email accounts are monitored. Unless, this is part of your job (such as sales professionals or PR people), limit this to lunch time.
Like it or not, most companies are risk-adverse.
These are the things it should be. Anything you have put out there could possibly be viewed by just about anybody. If you use social media in the right way it can be a valuable tool in helping you find a career, further your career and make countless valuable contacts. However, if you don’t use it the right way and fail to properly manage your online image, social media can be a hindrance to you professionally, and actually be another hurdle you have to climb in this difficult job market.