Social media is often seen as a big force in our lives –- and indeed it is. People use it for lots of different reasons:
- to find friends,
- to find work,
- to find out what is going on around the world.
But when it comes to linking social media and your job together, you need to be careful about the potential results that could occur.
For instance there is the often quoted fact that once something is online, you cannot take it off again. Even if statements are retracted or said to be incorrect later on, the originals are still out there to be found. This means that you have to tread very carefully if you are going to use social media sites at all.
Promoting Yourself Through Social Media
Here are the two sides of this particular coin:
- THE GOOD NEWS: it is definitely possible to find a new job online.
- THE BAD NEWS: it is also possible to embarrass yourself and lose your current job if you aren’t careful.
To begin with you need to be careful about what you put online. It’s fine if you want to share things among your friends but with the openness of the internet today, your boss is just as likely to see it as well. It’s happened to other people and they’re out of a job because of it, so do be careful.
Here are some pointers to remember when finding a job via the social media websites:
- Use networking among friends and colleagues to try and find job openings.
- Make sure you don’t lie or stretch the truth –- you will be easily found out if you do.
- Assume that anyone offering interviews will check you out online before they interview you.
- Don’t leave an embarrassing footprint on these social media sites that will come back to bite you later on.
Using Sites At Work
Most workplaces now have some kind of policy in place about using social media sites. Depending on your job and where you work, this could be anything from a total ban to a restriction of some kind. But whatever the rules are for you, make sure you adhere to them. Even if you got the job originally by networking online on Facebook or some other site, it doesn’t mean you have carte blanche to use these sites while you’re working at your company.
There is no doubt that social media has become a huge part of many people’s lives. We may not all be on Facebook and we may not even spend any time on the sites where we have profiles in. But learning to moderate our use of these sites is just as good as knowing how best to use them in the first place.
Jobs and social media can definitely come together with successful results. But they can also clash in a major way, so be careful about getting into trouble about things that are said or done on these sites.
If you know your limits and you know when and how to use these sites –- and when not to –- you should be fine. Just be sure you don’t get involved with anyone who could be a troublemaker. Getting yourself untangled from any sort of online drama can be difficult!