Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Is an Online Identity Important When Searching For Technical Jobs?
First time accepted submitter quintessentialk writes "I'm looking for a new engineering job. I'm in my early 30s, and have a degree and some experience. I don't have an online presence. Does it matter? Is a record of tweets, blog posts, articles, etc. expected for prospective employees these days? What if one is completely un-googleable (i.e., nothing comes up, good or bad)? Though I haven't been 'trying' to hide, I only rarely use my full name online and don't even have a consistent pseudonym. I don't have a website, and haven't blogged or tweeted. I'm currently in a field which does not publish. Should I start now, or is an first-time tweeter/blogger in 2013 worse than someone with no presence at all?"
What do you do do?
If you're in IT especially and you're invisible you're suspicious. Lots of job applicants. What makes you stand out?
If you're a programmer looking for your next gig, having a slew of projects you've developed or worked on show up in Google can definitely help. Having lots of red party cup drunken pictures with your friends on a blog somewhere, however, will definitely hurt you.
If your technical job requires a TS or above clearance, it is best ot have very little presence. Party life or drug refrences in your posts will work against you in your background investigation for the clearance.
The truth shall set you free!
Frankly, any company that expects any given hire to have an extensive record of blog posts and tweets is not one I would really want to work for.
Not just because of the privacy implications, but because, in my view, that's expecting me to have a particular kind of personality: one that feels compelled to share everything, or at least a frequent chunk of what I do and think.
Unfortunately, this is just another manifestation of extroverts running most organizations and not even truly comprehending what it might be not to be an extrovert. So much of the hiring process and expectations in the workplace are centered around things that give extroverts a charge, but drain introverts' energy badly.
Just one of my big pet peeves X-P
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
I think your social media silence says quite a lot about what kind of person you are. If I were looking for someone to keep the company's secrets, it'd be you.
There are two choices for online presence that makes sense to me:
- avoid it completely
or
- use it only as a self-marketing tool. Only blog/tweet about technical stuff, no politics, current affairs, funny pictures. Only use social networks that bring value to you. I use LinkedIn, but it might be not useful for everyone. Always assume that whatever you put there is public, even if it says "private". Ignore trolls. Praise other projects freely, but be reluctant to post negative opinions. In general, be constructive.
what kind of a name do you have that 'nothing' comes up?
I have never been asked about imaginary friends in job interviews. Am I missing something?
You WILL be Googled. So I'd recommend at least having _some_ online presence. At least LinkedIn, which for technical people is pretty much a CV of what you have been doing over the past few years.
Not having a Facebook and such is actually a plus in my eyes.
Honestly, you're better off without an online presence. Unless the company is looking to hire a full time blogger, if they do an internet search at all, it will only be to find out if there's any reason why they shouldn't hire you.
What field exists but doesn't publish? How else do the professors exist and gain qualifications? I'd make a joke about marketing but even they have journals.
You've got to show your prospective employers that you are a "team player". Throw up a Facebook account with all your real details, and upload all the photos you can find of yourself getting drunk with your friends.
Bonus points if you can show yourself passed out on the floor, or waving money around in a strip club - this will show your willingness to "get involved".
I don't have an online identity either and it hasn't hurt me, except for moderation of my posts here on Slashdot.
If you wanted to join Facebook or some social networking or games startup, a lack of online presence might be an issue. But, you might find that your age is a more serious obstacle as you move past their hiring sweet spot (21-34 I'd guess).
You might think about opening a Linkedin account, if your resume looks good.
OTOH Red Hat is one company that I've noticed prefers to hire someone with a track record submitting to open source projects. That's a lot different from blogging though.
Should I start now, or is an first-time tweeter/blogger in 2013 worse than someone with no presence at all?
When you begin blogging / posting is fairly irrelevant, but someone posting when they have nothing to say is definitely worse than having no online presence.
I'm in a similar situation. I'm in my late 30's, self-employed, and get most of my work (projects and contracts) by networking in the old-fashioned sense - phoning contacts every once in a while, taking people out to lunch, keeping in tough with agents and hiring managers. Lately though, many of the people I maintain relationships with in this way are increasingly asking for my website / linkedin / facebook details.
I'm not a fan of any of the major social and business networking sites, as I don't necessarily wish to be publicly associated with everyone I know. Perhaps I'm just old-fashioned (I am almost 40 years old, after all), but having bought in to the "share everything online" mentality on the AOL chatrooms in the mid 1990's, and having run a personal website from then until the early 2000's, I soon realised that too many people had easy access to my personal information, and retreated from these services.
Now I'm in the process of setting up an online personal presence for the first time in a while (I have a company website which is fine for my existing clients). I've decided to shun LinkedIn and Facebook as I don't trust their privacy policies, so I'm going with a blog instead. I had been about to start coding my personal website from scratch, but I've decided to use Wordpress for now, and see how I get on with it first. I figure if I can write my own plugins for WordPress to get my pages looking the way I want them to, then I have the benefit of any security updates to the WordPress Codex.
Like the original submitter, I'm keen to see what other people's opinions are on this matter.
Philosopher (n) - a wise person who is calm and rational; someone who lives a life of reason with equanimity
Nobody's going to even look. All we care about is can you do the job. The only exception is if the job is in marketing, then they may care about your use of social media.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
.
An exception would be if the applicant links to his professional online presence in the CV. Then I would use that as I would any other information on the CV. However the presence on the web does not make the information different than having the same information on the CV.
If I were hiring for a sensitive position where a background check is warranted, then I would do a real background check.
But if no background check is required, why go poking around in someone's private life.
It sounds like to much extra bullcrap to but up with to find a job, you have to have an online presence now? What happen to being in the real world? I honestly feel like we live in the dystopian computerized world of Christopher Anvil's Strangers to Paradise.
Having just sifted through about 100 CVs to find 5 of 6 potential candidates for a senior programmer opening let me fill you with some tips:
* First and foremost: do not pad your CV with things you barely know just to qualify. It's one thing if you used both MS SQL Server and MySQL interchangeably in your past employment but if you used exclusively SQL Server for the past 3 jobs and the requirement is "experience with MySQL" do not apply. Including "experience with MySQL" to trigger the keywords will be an indicator of desperation and lack of professionalism
* About the original question (online presence): it is detrimental unless you are world renowed in your field. Bruce Schneier can point to his online body of work but if yours consists only in presence in Facebook groups, an occasional post on some majordomo list for your pet language or, heavens forbid, a Linkedin account just ommit it. It won't get read and if it does, more likely than not it will show a side of you that would be better hidden.
* The only valuable online presence is a portfolio. Websites you were part of the development team if you area applying for a web developer position, website for the product or service you helped to create, anything that can prove the quality of your work and your qualifications.
* Last but not least important: hiring in this field is mostly about word of mouth and references. The first thing many companies do when trying to find someone qualified is to ask the current employees "do you know someone you can vouch for this position?" That is the surest way to get to the shortlist, to have someone to vouch for you by name.
Last, a little rant. Lucky for us Slashdot got bought by Dice so most of the "infomercials" are in form of people getting and giving advice about employment. Imagine if they had been bought by Sony or Microsoft, it would be a lot like when "jumptheshark.com" got bought by TV Guide only to be dismantled and destroyed.
An exception is if you have a website where you show some of your projects. It can work as a portfolio.
But yes, if we are talking about some silly social media profiles or blogs, don't bother writing some dummy content, if you aren't passionate about that kind of media otherwise.
I considered the same thing a few months ago then backed off to rethink what I was trying to accomplish. Mainly because of the fear of screwing up, if you do mess up somehow there's no way back. That's obviously bad for a teenager in high school, it's in another league for a professional trying to advance his career.
What I realized was that creating a presence isn't necessarily an all-or-nothing affair. It's simply ranking by what could get out of hand. Meaning that on a scale of 1-10, Linkedin is targeted toward professionals so probably an 8, the Google circle thing is maybe a 5, Twitter is a 2 and Facebook is a zero.
My checklist ended up focusing on these four things:
- Controlling the blend of professional and personal information that gets out. The information you expose shouldn't allow one to divine your political views.
- How much of what you expose is tied to other people's social stuff. For example, could a retweet be misinterpreted or someone posting something offensive on your Facebook wall.
- Working it backwards, what would you like Google and Twitter to show then try to craft that. It's worth looking at what other people's profiles look like and use it as a template.
- How much time is going to be required to maintain my "social garden". Obviously the fewer services the better but only if they're worth the hassle.
(Btw, in the end I said screw it and decided to think about it some more)
I find myself in a similar situation. I am looking for a new job. I have never had time for an online presence, but an heavily foul-mouthed person, who shares my uncommon name, does. Worse, we're about the same age. Without looking like a nut job, how do I put on my resume that I am NOT that guy?
Not a single police force has tried to hire me since I started using medical marijuana. Just try to get a pilot's license! Oddly, if you drink, they'll trust you not to fly drunk but if you use medical marijuana they won't trust you at all.
Beyond a basic background check-- maybe-- to make sure you're not a felon, an ex-con or some particularly dangerous idiot, no one cares.
The possible exception to this, I suppose, might be some amazingly new young company filled with amazing new young workers who will soon be crushed out of existence by other firms who make better use of their time than scouring the interwebs to see what kind of social media presence their new hires have instead of worrying about what their technical skills are.
I work for a well-known technical company with tons of both open-source contributions and projects we've open-sourced ourselves; we have a techblog, and a presence in many conferences.
When we look at someone technical, we see if they have a presence online. That doesn't mean Twitter or Facebook -- we really don't care about them unless they're public and inappropriate -- but contributions to OSS, technical blog posts, talks, etc. If it's there, it may make us somewhat more interested.
That said, I have a few engineers working for me who are similarly Google-invisible, and who have no interest in creating OSS, speaking at conferences, or writing blog posts. That's not a problem. They weren't penalized when we interviewed them, and they're not penalized now.
I suspect that a company, given the choice between a famous engineer and a non-famous engineer who are equally qualified, may be biased to hire the famous engineer (in my company, we'd just hire both), so I suspect it's an informal edge, not an explicit expectation (most of the time).
have a degree does not all ways helps in IT and CS is not IT Not helpdesk / desktop NOT sys admin and so on.
I don't know what type of engineer you are. I am an infrastructure manager for a large law firm and have hired several Infrastructure engineers for my company recently. (network, system, storage engineers).
I review resumes and if the person looks good, I see what they have on Linked and if it matches what is in the resume. I'll then do a basic Google search for their name and maybe a location or specific employer if I get too many results and spend about 30 seconds to 2 minutes opening up some of the results. The Google search does not hold too much weight. I never use Facebook as a reference and do not even open a results if they come up. Twitter I'll take a quick glance sometimes.
There is a significant amount of resumes that do not match what people have in Linked In. Some are way off. I know I'm looking at the same person as the resume I have because some of the information matches like contact info and maybe some of the jobs and times. In some cases with people doing contract work or consulting, they put the actually company they did the work for in the resume (Bethesda Army Hospital) but in Linked in, they put the name of the consulting company they work for (Booz Allen). I understand that but I have to connect the dots.
All of that being said... The resume I have in hand is the overwhelming reference I use to determine if I want to talk to them. Facebook and social networking is is just about 0%. Everyone has skeletons in their closet and has stuff they do in their off time. As long as you can get along with co-workers, the work is what matters. If your worship the devil in your off time and let everyone on Facebook know but your a very good Cisco engineer and have proven yourself worked in similar sized organizations as mine for at least a few years you have proven you are able to move up in the world of IT and hold down a job.
As a new engineer, my lack of online presence didn't matter to the company that just hired me. I've always made a point of trying to obfuscate whatever I do, and that hasn't seemed to bother anyone I've ever applied to. I have yet to even get any requests for 'social media sites I use' or anything of that nature.
If anything they'd check a 'professional networking site' like Linked-In, but that'd be about it.
So, no it doesn't matter, and stay away from companies where it does. The last thing we need is for society to accept that snooping is 'good' or 'expected'.
"Our goal each year should be to increase the number of goals we set for ourselves!"
What if you share the same name as a murderer that comes up in Google as the 1st result?
What if your name is so common, that other people's identities totally suck, and it makes you look bad?
As some previous commentators have said, these results hold little weight. Then again, we are living in an era where most 20-somethings perceive things at face value. You know, lack of experience, compassion, and sympathy?
I've been out of work for a year, and have a blog that's disconnected from my real name, where I write dark comedy; yes, I write articles about workplace habits, but I don't trash people. It's funny, professionally, not some ranting teenager who thinks he's funny. I don't have a LinkedIn, and my Facebook only contains relatives. Amazing, though, everyone wants me to know "GIT" and Subversion and crap like that.
I suppose I'll have to release all my programming knowledge on GiT, to GIT a job.
I'm a zOS Systems Programmer and one of my most used resources is the IBM-MAIN mailing list. If you can find one in your field that you can contribute to, your name will become a searchable item.
I pay scant attention to resumes, except as a starting point and a way to see if you can string words together in a syntactically correct manner. Not having an online presence won't hurt you necessarily. After the receiving a resume the first thing I'll do is to google you to see if you have:
I use this information to prepare for the technical interview, and make notes to call you out on your experience and listed skills. If you walk the walk it will show through in your online presence, face-to-face and pairing interview.
Not having these things is not necessarily a bad thing, especially if you're fresh out of college, but having them lets you tell your story. Not to mention that if you have any length of experience I'd be suspicious if you didn't engage in at least some of these activities.
God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
Then I can assure you do have a presence already.
none
i've been gainfully employed over a decade and have no online presence. it's never stopped me.
Unless you're applying for a job that requires security clearance (no presence might be good) or a marketing/PR/public-facing position (having a presence is good), it's really only going to be used to screen people out. If a Google search turns up a red flag about someone else with the same name, you might want to create a LinkedIn profile for yourself to SEO your results and easily distinguish yourself from your negative doppleganger. Recruiters are also using LI much more frequently now to look for talent, so it can't really hurt to have a profile. You might get some leads. Other than that though, there's not much reason to go out and create a presence just for your job search. It's only going to hurt you if you post something a recruiter or hiring manager doesn't like and you're not going to get many brownie points for a post they do like.
Umm, if you want a job not in the online "film industry" do not provide a goatse link!!!!!!!!
For the last round of hiring my company did, it was strongly suggested that any applicants open a Github account so they can use it to save the code they wrote for our evaluation. Having a Github account can give software-oriented people a chance to publish any projects they've written, akin to a portfolio for graphics design artists.
Sanity.html - Error 404 not found
At a previous job, my employer required all employees to have a page on Facebook and we were all supposed to "friend" the company's corporate page. I told them "Fire me if you like, I refuse to join Facebook." Worked there for quite a while, and never got called out on it. I did, however, have to list any on-line communities I was part of in my "Disclosure and Background Check Release" to get my security clearances. They told me I had to stop posting in the sci-fi discussion group I was a member of. While that was a small price to pay for an amazing paycheck doing something I enjoyed, I thought it was a little draconian.
With their complete dropping of the Facebook requirement, I wonder if I'd have called their bluff if they would have done anything.
Yea, maybe things are different in Silicon Valley when applying to tech giant companies, but 'round these parts up here in Canada, no one cares what you do online. It's assumed that everyone uses Facebook and no one uses Twitter and anything else? No one cares.
Whoosh. (characterZer0 probably meant a link to the actual other guy, using goatse as a silly example.)
You can always show off how much you've contributed to open source, e.g. with a github account. Even if it's various tiny commits in dozens of projects. This will allow employers to get a good idea what kind of code you would produce.
I develop open source in my spare time because I can work under my own terms and schedule. And actually take the time to document my work, and refactor it to make it easier to work with.
None of that I get to do during my professional programming ;)
Sell out. How does it feel to be a traitor to the constitution?
If an employer demands a strong online presence in the first place, they're bullshit and not worth your life. I know it reduces your options by a ton, but what's the point in working 40 hours in the office and another 20+ at home in your "free time" to make your rich bosses richer? Indulge your other interests in your free time, making it actual free time, and be a balanced person.
If you like offer your master/phd thesis for download on a homepage, and a complete list of your skills. That is what I like to find for possible new colleagues. Anything beyond that does more harm than good IMHO for technical jobs. I work as a consultant and my employer needs people who can work behind the scenes, without bragging about it and solve some problems which require understanding/listening more than talking/broadcasting. Social media usage may be good if you want to go to an interenet marketing job or viral campaign manager, but lets face it:
If you have too many friends on facebook or ask stupid questions on the wrong platform, or provide your idea of demo-code, it means you have too much time. 100 friends on facebook and 1000 posts or questions on stackoverflow do not help you gettign a job done. Unless you can provide really high-profile answers, save your time. Post relevant things, keep political or religious or ideological things out of it, and only post about things you are really good at.
Document your pet projects (which reflect what you really like to do) on your own website with a distinctive name (sort of personal branding). It may take years to find but at some point you might find a job description which is a perfect match. When applying for the job refer to your own website to substantiate your skills.
In my, "About You" section, I include this statement: "To prospective employers: This is my personal wall and has absolutely no reflection on how I perform my job. Shame on you for peeking. Now, get back to work evaluating me as a future employee, please."
-=- Many seek good nights and lose good days.
A while ago I made the decision to separate my solid technical stuff (which includes this Slashdot account) from the fuzzier edges of my online presence (political crap, fandom junk, Cheezburger.) And these are also separate from my public presence (which includes Facebook and my LinkedIn account.) Employers only get the technical handle and the public presence.
Nothing says you can't create an online presence from scratch, and make it a safe, clean one. Follow only cool people on Twitter and post only boring things and safe retweets. Start a blog and post nothing but links and discussions to boring tech articles. A one month old blog without any followers is less of a red flag to some employers than no blog at all.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
let me guess, the company was FOX?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
There are reserved domains for just that purpose. This isn't a whoosh - this is one of those moments where you initiate direct eye contact and say, "REALLY?!"
It was an otherwise informative comment which will get down-voted, so I'll re-phrase with a word of caution.
Does the other guy have a website, and work in a different profession? If so, create your own simple page with your CV, and put a note near the top "Looking for K. Ackle of Loudmouthville, TX? Click [here]".
But be careful not to appear to be linking to someone who is simply more popular than you - so choose a brief way of implying he's just a different person, not that you constantly get messages from people trying to contact him and are annoyed by it. It's a very thin line, and your circumstances will dictate what is best to use.
You're asking if not having blabbed a load of vacuous tweets or writing a fucking blog counts against you in the employment market? No. Stupid fucking question. Next.
I think you're confusing professional presence with general presence. Having a blog where you post solutions you've found, posts of IT-related articles, links to a StackOverflow profile, and GitHub contributions would be great (these are just examples, not a check-list and not valid for any/all "IT" professions). Your employer doesn't and shouldn't give a damn about your twitter or facebook. Even better, in states where they can ask for your password, it's even better to not have one at all! Or make a FB profile that has nothing but a nice profile picture and the most locked-down settings FB allows you to have.
If you blabber about stuff on the internet you'll get hired by people that do. If you don't, you'll get hired by people that don't. Both groups prefer their own, so to maximize your job offers you should both post to twitter and not post to twitter. Good luck!
While I don't hire people very often (6 in the past 6 years), for what it's worth: I have NEVER checked an applicant's online presence. Unless you're applying for a job at a social network type of company, it should be irrelevant.
The key is to exploit social media - like martial arts, turn them against their own strength and make them work for you. Have your web site, but have social media profiles that are clearly you and which link to your web site. Put minimal information on the social media sites, and use them to direct people to your web site. Social media sites want to capture people - you need to exploit them by sending people to your web site.
(And don't think social media sites don't know people are doing this, either - Facebook used to have your URL on your home page. Somehow, in all their redesigns, this URL got buried.)
...without an online presence , I would say you fall into the 'Control Group' ;-)
Sure, a portfolio for a web designer type position is very useful. But they aren't checking to see how often you tweet or what your facebook status is- they're checking how pretty you can make a website and how clean the html is. Not quite the same thing as an online identity.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
I spent two weeks revamping my website after work in preperation for switching jobs. It became a simple, but stylish list of games, tools, and websites I have built with lots of images and technical explanation. It linked to most of my social sites (twitter, linkedin, youtube) and a Tumblr blog that was more focused on political opinion articles than technology. About 2 months ago, after letting a guy know I would be looking for a job, he asked me to lunch, where he presented me with an offer, rather than the opportunity to schedule an interview (which was what I was expecting). He told me that he decided to hire me after 'reading everything on my website.'
If a lack of web presence is good, why are ACs filtered to the bottom of the pack?
Part of what my employer pays me for is confidentiality.
I happen to know the engineering details of certain gambling devices. As a result, I don't want people to know who my employer is, both for their benefit and for mine.
I have been working at my company for about 10 years. I have absolutely nothing to say publicly about my work for them, and I also rely on them to keep my name confidential as much as they legally can.
First of all, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I don't work in IT or software so some of the specifics don't directly apply, but the generalities do. The biggest clarification I need to make though is by 'online presence' (with my examples of webpages, blogs, and tweets) I didn't mean social chit chat or tools like facebook. I meant 'having a history of making topical posts that are well received by an audience'. If a twitter feed, it would be a journalistic twitter feed, not a 'what I ate for breakfast' twitter feed. The argument (as it has been made to me) is that regularly generating content, and maintaining an audience, shows that you are an active member of your field, and that your ideas have some influence. Especially given that my current work is bound by NDA (no portfolio, no publications, vague resume) having something outside of that would be useful -- but I can't create a reputation ex nihlo. And, since I'm an engineer and not a journalist, it might not matter that much anyway.
I *might* do a search of technical forums to see what kind of tech questions and answers my applicant is giving / asking.
Let's get real here... Would you actually hire someone who isn't maintaining some kind of presence on StackOverflow, Github, or some open source pet project(s)? (Fwiw, Google head-hunts engineers based on the latter.)
yeah!
No important at all. Not sure where the idea came from, maybe some professions are so easy for anyone to get into that having an online persona is needed for some differentiation? Who knows. If you're a technical person, you're capacity to accomplish tasks and your personality are what's important. Here's a very recent article on what Google looks for, and even they're forced to admit that their infamous brain-teaser questions are pretty worthless. Everyone gets it now. It's your ability that counts. Read this http://www.inc.com/issie-lapowsky/5-surprising-facts-how-google-hires.html .
If anything, companies are starting to get super picky about who they're hiring because no one can afford to hire lazy, shiftless, indifferent, talentless people any more (and these folks outnumber the stars considerably.) In an interview at a smart company, if the interviewer gets any hint from an applicant that they're unreliable, unintelligent, or difficult to work with - they're toast before the interview is done. A quick email from the interviewers to the decision makers during the interview settles everything quickly so that no more time is wasted and they can move on to the next person.
Forget online personas and social networking. Want to be treated right? Bring your A-Game every day to the office and when you're interviewing.
Also, by the way, if you don't have an "online presence", you're lucky. I would start a smoking habit before having an online presence. Don't use your real name online and always behave like your real name is stamped on everything you post.
Top Secret is the bottom of the list of clearances available to contract workers. You get top secret just by making it through boot camp and tech school...
After I'd been online for 20 years or more, I got hired to do a job doing refactoring and computerization of the control system for the motorized doors in a working jail. This required a certain amount of poking-around to make sure that I was a trustworthy person, if for no reason other than potential contraband issues.
One day, after I'd been working on the project for a couple of weeks, the person responsible for vetting me says "Hey, Adolf: Did you know what when I google your name, nothing comes up?"
I said "Yep. And I'm not surprised, either."
And that was that. No big deal, even though as Chief Technical Lackey of the project I might have been expected to have some mention of me somewhere.
Why was I so invisible? Because I just never, ever bothered posting something under my real name, and I stay away from real trouble and out of the news.
Not that I don't write entire volumes of text on /. or flame away on various forums (and once upon a time, Usenet -- which is forever). I just never wrote any of it as me.
Why would I?
Why should I?
Now, granted: I don't hide very hard. The Gmail address above is easily connected to me by the right entities, if they're so-inclined, but chances are good that I'm not hiding anything from those particular snoops anyway....
Kid-proof tablet..
I only say that the majority of posters here have never been a hiring manager. I am and I've never heard of 'github'. Go head and flame me, but it is morons like me that hire you and set your salary. Moreover, I set your workload. And sometimes it IS NECESSARY to work 80 hours per week. This is called REALITY.
That being said, I'll look for your online presence and if it doesn't exist, I'll ask. If it does and every Facebook post has you holding a beer. you're DQ'd. If you have 100,000+ posts to some bizarre discussion board (github included), you're DQ'd also.
Working 40 hours a week every week as a software developer takes care of my technology enthusiasm itch. In my free time I like to do other things.
Personally I don't even have a Twatter account nor one on MyBook. I hardly ever feel the need to twat, and in MyBook no FacedIn account ought to be LinkTwatted to MyFace because all that stuff is just OldTwat. When it was SpaceFace i sumties rots smu tings but not
...keeping in tough with agents and hiring managers.
What, you mean like punching them in the face now and again? That's the American way, I know, I've watched the Sopranos. I think that's a great idea. I wish more people would punch agents and hiring managers in the face now and again. If only I'd known that was what they wanted...
Not with an attitude like that we're not.
Thank Christ for that. People who jump on the latest buzzword and splash around in it all bloody day long are a bunch of useless self-important and brainless prats. They work for other prats and are proud of so doing because they're brainless. Sod off with your bloody "passion" and stick it where you're most passionate you gushing great wazzock.
But it really does help having a few own projects on github or else.
I never forget to emphaze my projects when I'm being interviewed.
It does help, especially if it's too technical for the interviewer.
And in fact, it can harm your chances. Most adults view the online lifestyle as an irrelevant disconnect from reality and a tool of shameless self-promotion.
If you are in your 30s, you really have no business spending hours a day on social media managing your "online identity."
When I hire people, I would much rather see their spare time spent on face to face social activities and hobbies, since after all they will be working face to face with people in the office. I've been approached by a number of the "younger" generation of engineers and have been appalled at the complete lack of face to face social skills.
So, just be careful how you integrate the Internet into your life. It's one thing to keep up with Slashdot, post a comment here and there, and use things like Facebook as a tool to keep in touch, but spending so much time socializing online will only make you look like a self-promoter and one with poor social skills.
>> They told me I had to stop posting in the sci-fi discussion group I was a member of.
I many states, that is illegal. YMMV.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Maybe for Social Media jobs, but not elsewhere. Actually, where I work, we specifically look for people who DO NOT use social media and DO NOT post anything online. We prefer quiet, confident people here that do not need to post online to get approval from unknown people.
Clearly, we are not into advertising or spewing crap.
I post as AC for a reason. An account could more easily be traced back to me and then everything written would be "under review" to ensure I didn't violate any federal laws. No, I do not work or contract for the NSA.
Try looking for Richard Stallman or similar minded hackers on social media sites, to see if it's an indication of technical abilities.
Just started a new job as a sysadmin. The boss actually hired me over the other candidate because I knew how to hide my info online. All he could find was my LinkedIn. He praised me for being able to hide my other social networking, blogs, etc.
You're kidding, right?
I don't know of a single HR department looking for a serious (ie non-trivial) hire that DOESN'T at least google the person's name to see what comes up.
I'd say to the OP that it's unlikely you're EXPECTED to have such a presence pre-job. (If you're in marketing, etc they'll probably want you to develop one but in their context, not your own anyway...) I will say that insofar as I can tell, the general impact of already HAVING such a presence is often negative only because your pre-professional behavior can often not be, well, professional.
That said, I've seen that some HR departments are growing more enlightened, and recognizing that a dull/lackluster online presence DOES say volumes about your self-control and discipline.
-Styopa
As a hiring manager, the first thing I check is whether or not an applicant has a LinkedIn profile - and how thorough it is. If there's little content or it hasn't been maintained in a while, it speaks volumes.
I look for the quality of accomplishments, the quality of the recommendations, and the progression of the career. Much like you would when reviewing a resume / CV, but I find the LinkedIn format can add more depth.
Next, I'll Google to see what contributions the applicant has made to the field. White papers, presentations, etc. all forming a _presence_ in the field.
Generally I ignore Twitter / Facebook presence since I perceive these as personal outlets rather than professional.
While absence of a strong online profile is not a deal-breaker, individuals who invest in their professional presence online always have an advantage when sorting through the flood of qualified applicants.
Nope, not kidding. I've never googled a prospective employee. I don't know anyone who has. I wouldn't trust the results if I did- how do I know its not someone else with the same name? I certainly don't care about their facebook or twitter feeds- even if I did for some reason do it, I'd just be checking technical sites.
If they specifically mention a site on their resume I may visit it, but that would be the limit.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Attorneys need to do probono work to keep their license, why is it too much for you to carve out a few hours to put up a portfolio of your work on GitHub?
Attorneys also get paid by the hour, which I don't. After working unpaid overtime, there aren't many hours left. Attorneys also are paid more; from those who are given more, more is asked.
I consider facebook and twitter to be personal-social, not business. Linkedin is for business. It is where recruiters in many industries are looking for candidates. They troll profiles and the appropriate groups. They also post jobs in the groups. My linkedin profile is unusually thorough, with dozens of project entries, but as a result is producing very much on-target contacts from recruiters. http://www.linkedin.com/in/dakra
Somebody from Nigeria asked me to mentor him towards certification in something. I was concerned that maybe this would turn into a scam or my electronic interactions might end up with an inbound malware payload. By googling him I found his interactions and comments on other people's blogs and emedia columns going back several years. The name, id match, and content gave me the confidence that he was both bona fide and an experienced practitioner.
I am sure there are blogs, columns, help sites, and discussion groups in your field. Participate. You'll get ideas and contacts. Of course, if your industry doesn't publish because it is covert, for good or for bad, that is another story. ;-)
As someone involved in hiring engineers sometimes - tweets, no. At least in my field, social media is pretty much a convenience thing: if you use it to keep in touch with people, fine, but it wouldn't cross my mind to look at your twitter profile to judge your hireability. You don't _need_ a blog, but a long-standing blog with thoughtful posts on engineering issues would obviously be a plus for a candidate. If it was screamingly obvious you'd just started one while you were applying for work and were trying to tailor it to look good for potential employers, though...well, I suppose it would at least show you were making an effort.
really, when you're looking for good engineers you're looking for the whole identity. I don't think it's a big problem if you're not Google-able: you just need to make sure you provide some good supporting information to potential employers directly. Provide extensive samples of code you've written, first of all. Ideally, provide entire repositories complete with history, to prove that you understand how to work with source control properly. At least for me, I'm not checking off a list of 'current buzz technologies' you're involved with, I just want to know if you're someone who understands how to write good code in a co-operative way.
"I'm looking for a new engineering job. I'm in my early 30s.."
Stop. They hate you already.
they would not be obliged to release those improvements
But there might still be a value proposition in doing so because one who keeps improvements secret rather than contributing them upstream must port the improvements to each new upstream release.
Most business software would only be useful to somebody in exactly the same line of business
Then keep what you release generic. Software to interact with, say, eBay or Amazon APIs would be useful to people who sell products in other industries. For example, if Phil's Hobby Shop were to distribute its eBay code as free software, companies that sell product lines other than R/C cars and model trains would benefit. The only really hobby-specific code would be that for interacting with distributors.