More than 50 percent of recruiters employ Facebook in determining final candidates for job applications, the Edinburgh Business School Facebook survey revealed on Monday.
“Facebook used to be like a great party for all your friends where you can dance, drink and flirt, but now with your Mum, Dad and boss there, the party becomes an anxious event full of potential social landmines,” said Ben Marder, report author and Early Career Fellow in marketing at the Business School.
Facebook’s uses have gone far beyond social interaction with many companies using networks as a marketing platform in which colleagues are frequently expected to engage. Keeping personal information from the public, as well as maintaining a professional reputation is increasingly challenging within such societies.
Educational institutions progressively endorse the idea of social media engagement, also using it as a means of connection to get on students’ level.
Edinburgh Business School state they communicate via social media by posting announcements, events of interest, news and information to keep their students updated.
Not only has social media made the headlines regarding celebrities’ tweets, some have also got into serious trouble because of casual remarks that ended up influencing their careers.
South African eNews reporter Lance Witten has been expelled from the eNews Channel Africa (eNCA) after posting a pun on Twitter about the recent death of a Linkin Park fan at the band’s concert in Cape Town.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in America has also announced it will be scouring social media activities for criminal-related activities.
“I will tell you technology will play a huge part, social media, Twitter. Any kind of technology that is new and doesn’t exist today, if there is any way to exploit it, these individuals will exploit it,” April Brooks, a special agent in New York field office at FBI told Reuters TV in an interview for the Reuters Investment Outlook 2013 Summit.
