How free is your FaceBook page?
October 4th, 2007 by the medical sales recruiter
Do you use MySpace or FaceBook? It’s getting hard to find someone who doesn’t, these days. If you do, this is just a little FYI and a warning for you: please be mindful of what you put on it, especially if you are looking for a sales position in the biotech, pharmaceutical, clinical pathology, or medical device industries. It’s becoming standard practice for employers to look at the social network pages of potential employees. You don’t want them to find something that will make them think you’ll be an unstable or undesirable employee. (see What’s on YOUR MySpace?) “Adapting to Social Network Surveillance” points out that “job boards are where companies go to find qualified job candidates, but social networks are where they go to disqualify job candidates”….so don’t put anything on there you wouldn’t want to see as a “national headline” in the newspaper. “Big Brother” has become not just the government…it’s all of us, including (potential) employers.
I wouldn’t say that every employer engages in this sort of practice. Some do, others actually use social networks to qualify whether or not someone is current with the latest trends. I would also point out that a sales organization would stand to benefit from hiring someone who knows how to navigate social networks. Part of the problem is that the traditional job boards, and a few new ones, are using the quote below (that you referenced) as a scare tactic so that job seekers will think that job boards are the trusted source. Unfortunately, job boards aren’t a trusted source any more than social networks are.
“job boards are where companies go to find qualified job candidates, but social networks are where they go to disqualify job candidates”