Facebook and peer pressure….your life need not be an open book

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.

Over the Hump & Playing in Their New Sandbox

It’s the end of October and also the middle of midterms for college and university students across the country.  I guess you could say we are over the ‘hump’ of the first term.  Getting over the hump means that we have activity in the WhyHire.me portal.  Most students are 60-75% finished their learning modules.  We are starting to see new photos uploaded, pitches being written, blog posts going up and videos being loaded.  And for the most part, unless you are in one of our classes, you can’t see any of it.

You can’t see anything because you are not in a class that has adopted WhyHire.me as a program and learning environment for personal branding.  Those that have chosen to use the program have closed the doors to the public while they learn and explore the world of social networking for personal branding.  Yes, this generation is very aware of social networks because of Facebook, MySpace and YouTube but they are not familiar or comfortable with using social networks for developing a professional presence.  That’s why we have developed a place where they can learn and experiment with their classmates and professors.  We’re also playing with them in their new sandbox.  We have 14 classrooms involved in business programs at Algonquin College, Centennial College and Carleton University.

I spoke to a few classes recently and here are a few comments from students in the class:

“The presentation was great, I really enjoyed it even though it was pretty early on a Friday morning. I can say it was very inspiring for me, gave me new ideas on to what I can do with me as a brand.”

“After your talk today (which very much inspired me), I was thinking I would film an introduction video of myself for the profile. A sort of visual media piece to make me stand out and inform people of what I’m about.”

“I think the lessons and system are very educational. The creativity and thought put into this system is very much appreciated. It’s about time we started stepping away from just the traditional resumes and use technology to help promote ourselves. Congratulations to you and your team for being so innovative and allowing a new perspective into the education system.”

I’m looking forward to the second part of the term, as more students play, experiment and start to understand the power of the developing their own personal brand.

Friends versus Contacts – its not about volume…its quality

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.

Social Media Discussion Continued

I really enjoyed this weeks class.

Interview with Sarah Ormon – Switched On!

I interviewed Sarah Ormon, a student from our Transition to Marketing Professional course last Friday.

Let

Social media tools allow people to join together online to discuss, contribute, share, influence and create. The tools that make these functions possible are diverse and changing rapidly.

Most people are aware of Facebook (much more on Facebook in future posts) and MySpace which are social networking tools. Next on the list would be YouTube for video sharing or Flickr for photo sharing. This blog is another form of social media. But more recently we have micrblogging with Twitter or social bookmarking and tagging using a variety of tools including Digg, Technorati or StumbleUpon. The tools keep coming at us and provide us with new ways to connect and affect the world around us. We are no longer the silent masses but individuals that have a voice and the ability to share and promote our thoughts, perspectives and expertise.

The students of tomorrow can take advantage of these tools to market themselves, their ideas, and their differences to potential employers. We want to give them a new platform to develop their professional social media persona but they must also learn to manage their social persona.