Do you have a MySpace Page? 
I don’t and I don’t have any real plans to have one. Not because I am against MySpace, not because I am trying to keep potential employers from learning about who I am – I just don’t have time to build another social community right now, but I might sometime soon. My 16 year old sister has a MySpace page. My 15 year old step-son has one. We have a witch in our town – she has one too (you can see it here), but that’s a whole other story.
I really support how MySpace has fostered an environment of self-expression and I totally support the undercurrent of a revolution that you feel every time you hear how many more users the site has. Ross Levinsohn, President of News Corp’s Fox Interactive Media unit (see his MySpace page here) recently said,
“Kids don’t have a way to express themselves, and that’s led to the rise of social networking…It’s all about getting them to interact and express themselves. We are starting to take a different mindset. We don’t want them to sit back and be passive.”
Right on. No More Boring Vanilla.
Sites like this are increasingly enabling people to develop their personal brand, but they are also being used as a window into what I am calling your ‘candidate brand’. We keep hearing the references to young adults missing out on job opportunities because of what recruiters are finding out about them on the internet. MySpace and other tools are being used to target and/or research job candidates. Unfortunely, recruiters are often shocked at what they find. It seems that one’s personal brand doesn’t always bolster their candidate brand. According to a recent article by Alan Finder in The New York Times,
“Many counselors have been urging students to review their pages on Facebook and other sites, removing photographs or text that might be inappropriate to show to their grandmother or potential employers. Counselors also encourage students to apply settings on Facebook that can significantly limit access to their pages.
But it is not clear whether many students are following the advice. “I think students have the view that Facebook is their space and that the adult world doesn’t know about it,” said Mark Smith, director of the career center at Washington University in St. Louis. “But the adult world is starting to come in.”
The adult world? Or the Real and Authentic World? The Canadian HeadHunter over at The Recruiting Animal in a post here liked Julian’s snippet from our recent project building a corporate recruitment blog:
“My favorite moment from blog training? When a recruiter explained that she didn’t see how she could possibly write on the company blog when all she’s done for the last year is tell her teenage son to avoid posting on blogs for fear of sexual predators. That was one question I didn’t anticipate.”
Do we as a culture really want companies, and thereby the employees that make them what they are, to be as vanilla and safe as your average gated community on a golf course? Is this what builds a great company? Are we too afraid that we will see something about their “lifestyle” that isn’t safe or vanilla? So much of our culture, especially corporate culture, is just devoid of any real character. Everyday it seems that there is an article or a post out there that points to how we need job candidates to only have “safe” representations of themselves on the web, we want safe and ‘professional’ blog content in order to have it be ad supported and we need corporate blog policies to keep ourselves from making an ass out of you and me.
But I digress….just like Employer Brands, Candidate brands should be built on truth. Employer Branding is not supposed to be about what you think job seekers want to hear – it’s about displaying the realities of your organization and getting to its essence. More and more the next generation of job seekers are willing to give that to us – their essence – their personal brand – but we are trying to squash them for it. Instead of trying to quell the revolution that is happening on social networking sites – employers should embrace it and participate openly in online communities to get out the company’s value proposition and message to connect with talented job candidates. Like it or not, it’s the *real* content on these user generated pages that is the gold.
From an article in The Economist:
“Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones, two British academics, eschew the notion that effective bosses can be constructed piecemeal. Their implicit message is that bosses are born, or at least made before they delve into books on management. Rather than suggesting that high-quality leaders can be constructed from what they dismiss as an “amalgam of traits”, they stress that there are “no universal leadership characteristics”. The talent that the pair thinks most vital is “authenticity”.
After 25 years spent observing well-regarded chief executives and good managers further down the ladder, the authors conclude that those who are true to characteristics they already possess make the best bosses. Their message to the aspiring high-flyer is “be yourself”, have a lot of self-knowledge and be comfortable with who you are. Identikit executives hiding behind the latest management fad, ambitious role players, time-servers and office politicians may manage to creep to the top. But Messrs Jones and Goffee insist that those they seek to lead will soon find them out. Authenticity cannot be faked, they say, and a little eccentricity won’t hurt either. The authors approvingly cite Mr Branson’s casual style and endearing difference from the norm that his followers appreciate.”
Maybe Recruiters shouldn’t go looking for ‘dirt’ about candidates online unless they are willing to do that for their current employees – they might be surprised at what they find.
“Are we too afraid that we will see something about their “lifestyle” that isn’t safe or vanilla? So much of our culture, especially corporate culture, is just devoid of any real character.”- Well said.
So glad someone protested. You’ve got to have the maturity to contextualize what someone writes in college or highschool. People at that age have a right to explore and a right to expression. If you’re going to go looking- at least look at that information authentically; not from a moral high ground.
Courage and authenticity are the same thing. Courage is the essential leadership quality plus talents and skills.
A person who is authentic to her negative characteristics is not going to be a great boss. However, if the will to authenticity is thoroughgoing enough the courage it entails will be the mettle that makes a leader.
Thanks for the comment Astha – great blog BTW.
It is surprising to me that there aren’t more protesting voices out there on this topic – but it is highly complicated. We love blogs and social networking for allowing real and authentic conversations but we are weary of them because they document your thoughts in a more permanent way.
I have mixed feelings about where the line is between acceptable and unacceptable self-expression that won’t ruin your public persona. Why is it fine for Sir Richard Branson, a Knight no less, to talk about quitting school as a teen, illegally smuggling albums past his government’s tax system, or about being a thief as a kid without being judged? He wrote about it in a very permanent way in his autobiographies – but that isn’t going keep him from getting funding for his next big idea. When is it right and when is it wrong to judge based on what people are willing to put out there about themselves?
What I protest too most about this is the taking of this material out of context to make hiring decisions. Not giving someone a job because they have a MySpace page touting that they won the “most inebriated award” in their Frat at college is ridiculous. They did not walk into their interview drunk, touting that they won the “Most Inebriated” award in school a few months ago. What is on MySpace is “public”, but I would also counter that the information isn’t public for the world to see whether they want to see it or not.
We’re not talking about people who have openly deceived a prospective employer and lied on their resume or covered up an arrest. We are talking about people that are just out there honestly talking about their life for social interaction and entertainment. People are not flaunting the info in the face of their prospective employer – this is not the image that they are going to their interview with. Employers have to SEARCH and go DIGGING for this information. Are they willing to do this same sort of uncovering for their current employees to help them decide if they’re worth retaining?
“When you go in search of honey you must expect to be stung by bees.”
— Joseph Joubert
I totally agree with your point that candidates should be allowed to be themselves and express themselves authentically. However, I think the problem with MySpace (and the MySpace generation) is that they aren’t really free to be themselves. Posts about their sexual exploits, drinking or drug use isn’t meant to show they are different – it is menat to show that they are the same as all the other kids posting the same thing. Even though they are expressing themselves, I’m not sure they are really being true to themselves.
In addition, we all have to live with the fact that the Internet has made this into a small world. I liken it to if a candidate knew that a large number of a company’s employees hung out at a particular bar and the night before an interview that candidate went there, got wasted, took their top off, danced on the bar and then passed out. The candidate could very well show up to the interview the next day and have people that saw them living it up at the bar last night as interviewers. It’s a new world and a new genreation, but they still need to show judgement.
I think the point that the guidance counselors need to make is not – you should edit your profile – but that you should really think about whether or not your profile really describes you. If you call yourself “CrazyBitch” on MySpace – is that really how you see yourself?
That’s just my two cents – but from my perspective I see a lot more sameness than orginality on MySpace.
Hi Laura – thanks for the comment! All good points…and you are right – there are many unoriginal sheep on MySpace that are trying to be what they think their online friends want them to be. They have developed online personas that might not truly reflect who they are…reminds me a little of the geeks that used to play Dungeons and Dragons. Hey wait I’m a geek….
Anyway – MySpace has become mainstream fast – I think people are sick of being told how they are supposed to be. When you look at American – many have the perspective that you can go ahead and be crazy or promiscuous or gay, but just don’t tell us about it and certainly don’t put it in writing (or photos or vlogs).
I protest that it is arbitrary and possibly inaccurate information that gets to be used without the consent of the candidate to make hiring decisions. MySpace is about connecting with your peers and social entertainment – if you choose to not be original and stick with the crowd, well that is your right – but the point is that it is YOUR SPACE.
The site is not called MyResume. It was never created to be a place where you advertised your “Candidate Brand.” Candidates should have rights too and not have recruiters digging for dirt so that companies can seemingly reduce their “risks” and protect themselves from making “bad hires”.
Your job as a candidate is to prove that you have the ability to do the job that an employer needs and that is done through your work history and your accomplishments and even competency tests – not what you do when you’re off the clock.
I think at the core of this is sorting out what is peripheral and what is relevant.
Whether the candidate cross dressed in college, got wasted, or wrote utter crap (which as Laura pointed out might just have been to fit in)—all of this is irrelevant to his/her performance on the job. Just like our color, creed, religion and orientation are irrelevant to whether we make good contributive citizens in our society.
We have a tendency as people to get embroiled in the peripheral and more visible aspects of an individual while assessing them.
The relevant questions are whether the person has the skill, ability and knowledge to perform the job. And twenty to one their personal space is not going to tell you how well they code, manage or organize.
If material available on a person raises doubts in your mind about their integrity and honesty—be thorough in the references. Get recent, reliable data rather than speculating.
But please do not let peripheral characteristics get in the way.
Thanks for focusing on the issue Shannon- there should be more discussions on this!