Social networking could damage your career

A big night out - and certainly not the kind of picture you want your boss to see. So why talk about it on Twitter?

LINKEDIN – it’s the more serious, business-orientated cousin of Facebook; Social networking for people who don’t really ‘do’ social networking.

But earlier this month, Allen Blue, the co-founder of LinkedIn, announced on the website’s blog that it would be linking up with Twitter. This partnership now means that if you choose to link the two sites, anything you post on Twitter will appear on your LinkedIn profile, and vice versa.

Describing the collaboration as “like peanut butter and chocolate (a more alien concept this side of the Atlantic),  Blue said: “LinkedIn has always been about helping you to build your professional identity on the web. The many elements that make up your online professional brand range from your LinkedIn profile to the many professional conversations you’re a part of. Status has proved valuable to our users, from finding new assignments and jobs to kick-starting a global business empire. Now you can amplify those messages by broadcasting them to your audience on Twitter.”

Amplifying work-related achievements is a great idea. But the majority of people in a LinkedIn network are most likely acquaintances we have worked with in a professional capacity. Do we really want them knowing about our social lives? For example, if your manager asks if you had a nice weekend, you’re not likely to mention that you got drunk and ate two kebabs in record time, so why let him see it online? However, this is what many people are actually doing.

Perhaps it’s something that this Twitterer should have thought about when they were given a new job at networking and communications technology corporation Cisco. Tweeting that they were going to hate the work, but it was worth it for the “fat paycheck”, it was soon picked up by someone high up in the company. The new employee quickly deleted the post, but needless to say, they never got as far as being paid.

And a quick internet search throws up plenty of examples of people losing their jobs for broadcasting negative opinions on a social networking site, while forgetting that their boss or another staff member is following them. There are also numerous cases of people landing themselves in hot water, after phoning in sick yet still updating their Facebook status or posting tweets while off work.

And it could be detrimental for anyone looking for a new job, too. LinkedIn is the most used platform for recruitment because it is a network for professionals. But companies like Ernst & Young have started recruiting on Facebook – and Twitter is frequently being used in the same way, too. American brands such as Burger King (@BKCareers) and Taco Bell (@TacoBell_jobs) regularly post job opportunities on the micro blogging service. University leavers are also being encouraged to develop online networks for their career development and to build up contacts before they enter the worlds of work.

According to a Career Builder survey in June 2009, almost half (45%) of employers reported that they use social networking sites to screen potential employees, compared to only 22% of employers last year. Even US President Barack Obama realises the dangers of this. He has warned young people to be careful about what they write on social media – saying that, in the YouTube age, it could come back to bite you in later life. Obama himself has admitted he is ‘too clumsy’ for Twitter. (Leading to the question, who is actually doing the tweeting to Obama’s 2.7 million followers? But that’s something for another article.)

There are of course many pros to being able to cross-post your statuses. Linking all your social networking sites together (using sites such as Posterous or Ping) means your social networking strategy is a lot less time consuming. Displaying your tweets on LinkedIn in particular, is a good way of showing those that don’t do social media what Twitter can do.

But, as this article shows, you must exercise caution. Choose the option to ‘Share only tweets that contain #in’ so that you can choose which tweets are posted to your LinkedIn profile. That way, if you and your manager are connected on LinkedIn, he won’t necessarily see that you can’t stand coming to work on a Monday morning. And if you are tweeting things like that, you should make sure your profile is protected so that you only allow your selected followers to see your tweets.

The same thing goes for Facebook and any other sites you may use – make sure your privacy settings are up to date. A good rule of thumb is – if you wouldn’t say it out loud in the work place, then don’t post it online.