Tuesday, October 17, 2017
Facebook May Go For LinkedIn’s Jugular With New Resumé Features
Consumerist: While Facebook is, by far, the dominant “social” networking site, it’s rarely used for professional networking. Instead, people go to places like Microsoft’s LinkedIn when it comes time to look for a job or just put their resumés out there. But in Facebook’s quest to be all things to all users, it is testing new features that mimic much of what you’d see on LinkedIn.
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This really isn’t that crazy of an idea. I know people that have connected into jobs via Facebook and many other similar stories. Facebook has slowly become a slightly acceptable way to communicate professionally. I’ve heard of stories where directors and designers only respond to information through Facebook. It’s not exactly what managers would prefer, but we do want our team to respond and acknowledge information as it is disseminated. I’m not quite sure if this will affect LinkedIn’s users however I do know that I have often searched someone on Facebook if they are not on LinkedIn to see their work history if they have any and to see if we have any mutual friends. Facebook simply has a much wider net, so I’m more likely to find someone on Facebook than I am on LinkedIn. I think that LinkedIn will remain the top professional networking site, but Facebook could slow them down a little bit if this new feature is successful.
I feel as though Facebook is putting itself through a major identity crisis, and not in a very clean manner. It seems that they are always developing new ways to interact in an effort to solve the worlds issues, but unfortunately only have one platform that they are trying to shove all of these features into. While I know that Facebook does indeed own other platforms, for example Instagram, they seem to have ruined the main Facebook platform by bogging it down with too many features, so that users don't quite know what Facebook is really for anymore. This is where I find that Google is far more considerate and sensitive to this issue comparatively to Facebook as they have a wide range of solutions and features, but they implement them into a wide array of different platforms, so that each product that Google creates has its own image and consumers know what the main purpose of each application is.
Ever since finding a job or an internship became a possibility for me, the advice of "be careful what you put on the internet or social media" was again and again repeated. And they were right. Nowadays recruiters are searching you on the internet and scrolling through your social media feeds to find out more about what you don't include in your resume. Honestly, I feel like whether we want it to or not, Face book is becoming a place where professionals network. I know people who only friend others that they will either work for, with, or want to hire someday. I have already seen friends list many of their job in the limited slots that Facebook already offers, cluttering their profile. I think that this new feature could be a good thing. It gives a place for recruiters to look rather than scrolling aimlessly and it gives you more opportunity to find jobs.
They say that you should be careful of what you put on social media and this article proves it. I don’t necessarily want my professional life and my personal life to cross paths for potential employers to see. Nor do I need them reaching out to people on my friends list asking questions about me as a person. I’m not saying that will happen, but hey, when a company has access to your profile, they have access to a whole lot more than needs to be listed on a job application. I blame the youth and their desire to always be connected on social media and for one stop shopping. If I were a designer who wanted to really put my work out there, I would utilize a website. If someone wants to contact me, I can share my email and phone. You can call or send me a message to call you. We don’t need to have a business conversation over social media. I want to do that in person as much as we can. The concept of all things to all people scares me. It means that nothing is sacred, or personal any more. I get that some employers care very much about the image of the company and the employees that work for them as an expression of that image. If you as an employee bash your job or your company or complain about either on facebook, you have deeper issues and probably should not be working for that company in the first place. That’s just unprofessional, a skill that sadly, many people seem to use a lot. Facebook should be for fun and reconnecting, not for job hunting.
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