Verified Document

Online Reputation Case Study

Online Reputation The Paradox of Your Online Reputation

The use of social networks as a means to screen potential employees, in addition to monitoring existing employee's lifestyles, has emerged as a common practice in many companies globally today. The fact that advertisers spend $6B advertising on social networks this year, up 72% from 2010 shows the future of these networks, they are meant for selling profile information to the highest bidder (Hof, 2011). The three aspects of the ethicacy of social network use, from screening candidates, to monitoring employees and finally the legality of using them for sales prospecting by other industries including insurance and lawyers are discussed here.

Evaluating Job Candidates on Social Networks

The privacy settings on Facebook have been the subject of many studies and debates in legal, marketing and social sciences with Facebook stating that once the data is on their platform it is considered public (McKenzie, 2011). This places high school and college students in a unique and potentially challenging situation, as they are most likely to share pictures and comments entirely appropriate for their friends but potentially inappropriate for a new employer....

The danger of using social networks alone to evaluate potential employees is that the context can easily be taken out of context, and if a human resources manager or hiring decision maker takes a negative view to a candidate, content on their Facebook or social networking sites can be used against them. I think it is best for hiring managers and HR professionals to see social networking in the context of the total person, not judging them by their Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn profile alone but by who they really are. Admittedly Facebook has become a magnet for self-promotion and is turning into a narcissist's paradise especially for baby boomers wanting to show off their latest cars, planes, homes and trophy wives. Ironically the executives on Facebook who are hard-core narcissists will never be fired from their senior management roles for these and other excesses including openly cheating on their wives.
Yet the double standard falls hard on the younger workers just entering the workforce for lesser indiscretions. What recruiters need to realize is that they are catching a glimpse of a person during their process of becoming who they are right now -- and judging anyone just on their social networking content…

Sources used in this document:
References

Hof, R.. (2011, July). Advertisers Flock to Social Networks. Technology Review, 114(4), 67.

McKenzie, P.. (2011). Weapons of Mass Assignment. Association for Computing Machinery. Communications of the ACM, 54(5), 54.
Cite this Document:
Copy Bibliography Citation

Related Documents

Online Business Expansion Plan
Words: 5114 Length: 14 Document Type: Research Paper

Online Business Expansion Plan: Hot Dragon Viability of Product or Service Hot Dragon is a company that provides spicy mustard and hot sauces of various types. The company is going to start offering its hot sauces and spicy mustard online, so it can be directly shipped to customers. That will be more convenient for those customers, since they will not need to be concerned with heading out to a store to buy

Online Social Networking in Comparing
Words: 593 Length: 2 Document Type: Essay

The motivations of those using LinkedIn are to find a better career and grow their circle of influence throughout the industry of which they are a part. On Facebook, the same goal may be present, yet it is more likely to be connecting with long-lost friends and also bragging about only the most glamorous parts of one's life (Ledbetter, Mazer, DeGroot, Meyer, Mao, Swafford, 2011). Facebook tends to bring out

Online Casinos
Words: 476 Length: 2 Document Type: Term Paper

Online Casinos Internet gambling is now the fastest-growing sector of the gaming industry, so much so that in the year 2000, it grew by 79%, compared to a 6.01% overall growth rate in the United States (Helping pp). Mark Waters of GamblingSoftware.com, says, "Internet gambling is now bigger than gambling on Indian reservation, charitable bingo, legal bookmaking, and gambling on cruise ships" (Helping pp). The main reason for online gambling popularity

Online Advertising: Pro and Con
Words: 1583 Length: 5 Document Type: Essay

Producers have the ability to use flashy advertising as a substitute for a good product, and to deceive the customer through paid, sponsored relationships with bloggers and advertisers. Consumers may still have difficulty understanding when a blogger is in the employ of a company. Producers may find their good name impinged upon by reviewers who do not have legitimate grievances with a company. Staying offline and focusing on broad-based real

Online Consumer Reviews from the Consumer Perspective
Words: 2297 Length: 4 Document Type: Essay

Online consumer reviews from the consumer's perspective. Online consumer reviews are often the first way that a consumer will learn about a new product or service. The pros of online consumer reviews include receiving potentially unbiased information about a product or service. The cons of online consumer reviews include their increasing lack of credibility as more companies are resorting to tactics like paying bloggers for positive product reviews, paying writers to

Online Newspapers the Newspaper Industry, Picturesque for
Words: 4448 Length: 10 Document Type: Term Paper

Online Newspapers The newspaper industry, picturesque for centuries, symbolized novelty marked by downright, clear-cut representation of information and news and painstakingly categorized. Readers got used to repose faith in some bylines and be aware of indications of prominence, like the blaring headline in the form of a banner. A good number of people think a computer screen can never take the place of a newspaper. Online newspapers are securing a

Sign Up for Unlimited Study Help

Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.

Get Started Now