A tremendous champion of WhyHire.me is Lyle Wetsch at Memorial University in Newfoundland. Lyle is a strong advocate of personal branding and using the web for effective communications and marketing. We got to talking the other day about our respective challenges in the classroom and evangelizing the notion that young, adolescent and post-secondary students today need guidance, education and mentoring when it comes to using the Internet safely, appropriately and professionally. Click to continue
Most recently, Techcrunch highlighted a security hole in Facebook that would enable your chat sessions to be viewed by your friends. Shocker!
For those that believe what you send to friends or post to sections of a web site will stay private…don’t count on it. Fast moving software companies, faulty software components and copying and pasting are surefire causes of your data showing up in the wrong place.
A word of advice?
Assume anything you type, post or share will be viewed by anyone. Counting on Facebook or any software to be 100% secure, is simply a bad idea. Someone could easily copy and paste your post to another blog.
Follow the golden rule – don’t post content that you would NOT say to people on the street, at work or at school. By following this rule, you will be able to sleep at night and NOT miss out on professional or personal opportunities downstream.
I had an interesting chat with Sidney Eve Matrix, a professor of film, media and mass communications at Queen’s University. We 
got to talking about Facebook in the workplace and the pressure students are under to accept friendships from near strangers, business acquaintances or bosses. She mentioned, many of her students are in an absolute panic over what to do.
The founder of Facebook, has suggested we all lighten up and share with the world our entire digital life. It turns out, some of his pictures are private. Regardless of the trials and tribulations of such a high profile character, let’s explore social norms and the topic of openness and social media peer pressure. Here are some key points to consider and debate, if you start getting friend requests from potential employers, work colleagues or bosses:
- Was your company recently valued at 8 Billion dollars? If so, then you really don’t care about future employers poking around your party photos and updates. Congratulations – you are loaded and you don’t care what people think. Don’t let celebrities influence your decision. They live on another planet.
- Social versus professional content. Think about the interview process. Would you bring a photo album of your trips, parties and social outings to a career fair or interview? The answer is no, since this violates an established business norm. As you head into the working world, you will discover there are boundaries in the professional world. Work colleagues can become friends, but in the interim, one does not offer up a photo album to professional colleagues. Its just weird and creepy.
- Content out of context. If your sarcastic wit is well established, your true online friends will understand the humor behind an update you make. A friend at work would say “I am not taking enough pills and alcohol today” when things were stressful at the office. It was part of his wit. If I came across this post, I could very easily assume the person had a drug problem. Context matters!
We have espoused a simple rule for managing your Facebook privacy and friendships. Consider applying this simple rule before you accept Facebook friends. Friend people you would invite in for dinner, or include in a group invitation for a night of karaoke. Sharing a meal in your home suggests you have a personal connection, and joint karaoke suggests you don’t mind making an ass of yourself in front of this person.
This simple filtering rule will help you create a line between your professional and social lives. It is simple and easy to apply.
What happens if a business associated or boss wants to friend you? If they don’t pass the filter, ignore their request and move on. If need be, drop them a polite note suggesting your Facebook space is an extension of your personal life. I have turned WhyHire.me students down with a polite response along these lines. No harm, no foul.
If you do have a boss that continues to pester you, consider your options carefully. They are in effect asking to enter your personal world. My suspicion is, Facebook social pressure at work will start creeping into lawsuits, since one could argue there is a line an employer should not cross. Pestering someone repeatedly is likely grounds for harassment. Check out this story filed by Erin Geiger. In time, HR departments will start clamping down on bosses who friend employees or prospects being considered for positions.
Your life need not be an open book.
On occasion, I do get people asking to be friends on Facebook that I don’t know socially. The test I apply is, if I would go out for drinks or have the person in for dinner, then they are likely a friend I would confide in, tell a self-depreciating story or offer support during a tough time.
If I ignore a friend request from you, please don’t take it personally. Link to me in WhyHire.me and in Linkedin once you establish yourself and we have done some work together. Over time, we may very well become friend in life and online.
For those that collect friends like vendors collect business cards at trade shows, remember, you are making a social contract with these people. If you post items of a truly personal nature – a goofy photo, a self-depreciating comment or anything not professional, these posts can be misunderstood, or taken out of context, since your new “friend” does not really know you. Case in point, if you use sarcasm online and the friend does not really know about your sarcastic humor…they will misinterpret your post.
An extreme oh-o, is when someone copies and pastes your Facebook items and puts them in a blog entry for the world to see. Check out this story on Audra Sigler Shea and what happened to her racist remarks she posted in Facebook alongside her trusted friends. In this case, her nasty remarks were simply copied and shared with the world.
Keep your personal and professional world separate. This way you can keep up your sarcastic humor with your buddies and not worry about wierding people out.
