What you say online stays online

Has anyone seen the Australian Federal Police ads on telly? 

It goes like this, there is a guy going for a job interview, the interviewer is impressed with the guys resume, then goes onto say "it seems you also like posting drunk photos of yourself" and some other things that I can't remember.  But the point is that they are saying when you put these things online to be aware as to who can see them.

So it begs the question, although we can have photos of us drunk etc should that make it alright for an employer to research us via our facebook/twitter/bebo/myspace?

Not that long ago I was listening to the radio, and the djs were interviewing the lady that runs Drake Recruitment here in Bendigo.  She admitted on air that they look at facebook for their job seekers.  But shouldn't this come under discrimination laws?

I was quite outraged when I first heard this interview.  I thought, what bloody right do they have to look into my private life?  After all I have always had the idea that my private life and working life are two very seperate things.

But it wasn't long after this that I saw on facebook a girl advertising that she does babysitting, and asking people to hire her.  In her profile picture, she was standing leaning foward, pushing her boobs together.  In her photos there were drunken photos, there were photos of her very scantly clad, kissing numerous boys and girls.  My instant reaction was, I wouldn't want her babysitting my children.

It hit me then just how much first impressions count.  How much we decide just on that first impression.  After all she might have been a really lovely girl, really wholesome when she was around the kids, she may have been an awesome babysitter, but because I saw those photos of her and her breasts, I made that judgement.

This made me really start to think about what my first impressions say to people. I went back through my photos, to make sure that I didn't have any of those sort of photos, not that I make a habit of wearing skimpy clothes and showing my boobs to the camera.  But I didn't want anything that people could judge me on.

I think we all do, our eyes, lead to our gut, which tells us whether to trust, fight, flee.  And there are many people whose first impressions have caused me to flee.  I thought this blog might be a wee bit of a reminder that our first impressions count, and what we put on social network sites will get seen and we are likely to be judged by what our profiles contain.

Which reminds me of another story, a guy I know, he is very opinionated, but very agressive in his opinions, and wonders why a lot of social service employers wont employ him.  I wonder if this is the reason.  How many employers do actually look to these sites to help them make their decision?  I know as an employer I probably would.

For a little while we have owned a cleaning and maintenance business, and one of the things that I have always said, is that I would check their facebooks out, especially now that they are bringing in the time line facebook, it's even easier to see them, as the privacy settings are so different.  So is it wrong to do this? Or is it no worse than insisting on a police check or working with childrens check? We don't have a problem with our employers doing that. 

Mostly because we don't have a crime to hide.  However, when employers say they are going to look at our social medias, we do have things to hide, we have those online fights, we have cyber bullying, we have drunken photos, we have bragging about how drunk we were.  We have things that we want to hide from future employers.

And the conclusion I came to was this: Employers have been doing it for many years, it's just now that they openly say they do it.  So if you are sensible and don't use social media networks as a way to blurt out every thought then we should be right.  Remember that it's not just employers that don't want to hear about how smashed you got, how horny you are or what great head you give.  Most of your friends don't want to read it either.

So what do you all think about this business of employers checking on social media networks?

Love you all


Sam
xxx