I read an article about social media on the Whas 11 website which is a news station in Louisville.I have posted a link to the article below.
In the article it talked about 12 specific cases of people losing their jobs over content that they had posted on their personal Facebook pages that the wrong person viewed or their message was deemed inappropriate.
The terminations were from a wide range of careers, everyone from teachers, firefighters, and a cheerleader have all had problems with abusing social media. The reasons for getting fired also had a wide range, one example got fired for just saying her job was “boring”, while others were more extreme examples like a teacher trying to be funny asking if anyone knew of discrete hit man.
The article stated that in 2009 in an Internet security firm named Proofpoint assessed that 8 percent of companies who have more than 1,000 employees have terminated an employee for social media mess ups. The company did the same poll in 2008 and the results was only 4 percent. This is a growing problem, and I would guess that in 2011 this percentage is much higher now.
My opinion on all of this is that if you are posting something you would not want your employer to see on your Facebook page, or any social media site, it is something you probably should not be saying in the first place. No status update is worth losing your job or jeopardizing your career.
What do you all think? Is it violating your freedom of speech to not be able to post whatever you want on your Facebook, or has it turned into basically another resume for free game to be judged by employers?
I think this is a pressing topic on todays society for sure. My question is if it is common knowledge that people's facebook profiles are being checked during the hiring process and that can make or break the hire than why would we not carry that rule over in to the after you get the job when you are actually representing the company? seems a bit of a silly question if you apply that reasoning to it, but i don't know if that rule applies to all situations.
ReplyDeleteGenerally I feel that it depends on how your contract is written up. Most companies do not want to have their employees being portrayed in a negative light because the company is essentially the sum of its employees. It is perfectly natural for employers to want to squelch this sort of behavior. Plus, employees must know that their Facebook's are being looked at in the hiring process, why not after your get the job? The real kicker to me is that people voluntarily put these things up, it not like its that hard to NOT post everything about your life. Come on people!
ReplyDeleteNick, I agree with you in that it does seem silly to take so much effort in making sure profiles are acceptable when hunting for a job, but then put whatever you want on it when you are hired. I think that people should represent themselves in a way to not reflect poorly on the company they work for throughout their employment there.
ReplyDeleteChris, I think that you are 100% correct in that people should not post their lives on social networking sites. I think that putting negative things up on Facebook or Twitter is a bad idea, especially about your company.