Check Your Privacy Filters: Facebook Wants To Be the New LinkedIn (cnet.com)

From a report on CNET: Facebook isn't just for wasting time in the office. It can now help you find a new job entirely. The social network has unveiled a Jobs page, which allows businesses to list all kinds of work for you to find. You can even apply for the job and make contact with recruiters directly through Facebook. This could be seen as a challenge to competing services such as LinkedIn, the recruiting network acquired by Microsoft last December. But while LinkedIn is entirely focused on business, Facebook's social aspects could make it easier for potential employers to trawl your profile for details of your personal life.

Comments

Yeah, no thanks.

[Lord Kano]

I do my best to keep my personal and professional personas separate.

I share politically incorrect jokes and use profanity on my Facebook page but I would never do anything of the kind on LinkedIn.

I don't even list my employer on my FB profile.

LK

Re:Yeah, no thanks.

[cayenne8]

I would say...for your first job, do what you gotta do to get in.

From there....meet people and NETWORK yourself. Meet people in your business, be sociable with them and be someone they like and would like to work with.

I have found that going forward in a career, most often isn't what you know, but WHO you know.

Your professional network is your most valuable tool to use to switch jobs and move up the ladder.

I don't do social media, and I've not had problems so far keeping employed either with W2 or 1099 contracting.

It pays to develop your social skills, because quite often it may mean YOU get the job over someone else that might be technically a bit more qualified. But if you are personable and know people, you will get the edge and the nod 9/10 times.

Re:Yeah, no thanks.

[umghhh]

It may also be that people like you are the ones to be avoided. You know, the ones that destroy others because they can while claiming moral superiority. We have quite lot of them these days. In modern times they have indeed an easy life because nobody is perfect and all mistakes are there in the open for others to pick up (or in need to make up). There is no way one can protect oneself against a statement taken out of context and used properly to show how bad one is. In my corporation we always had one or two per location kept for glorious tasks of getting rid of people on the cheap. This is exactly the reason why the actual complete loss of privacy is such a bad thing.

Re:Yeah, no thanks.

[TheRaven64]

You are entirely correct, even though I absolutely hate how true it is. Most of getting (and much of maintaining) a job is about how much people like you, not about your competence

I disagree. When hiring, you have a limited amount of knowledge to make a decision that can be incredibly costly if you get it wrong (Joel on Software has a good article about the costs of hiring a bad employee vs the costs of hiring no one). A CV is easy to doctor (and unscrupulous recruitment agencies do this a lot). An in-person interview gives very little information for selection (though inability to answer basic technical questions provides good deselection information). If one of your employees has worked with a candidate before and can attest to the fact that they're competent, then that's an incredibly valuable piece of information. This is why your professional network matters: it's not about how much people like you, it's about whether people respect your ability enough to want to work with you again.

Re:Yeah, no thanks.

[TheRaven64]

Unless he or his employer is willing to pay money to Facebook, and the amount that Facebook or, more likely, third-party resellers charge for this information is very cheap in comparison to the amount that it costs to hire a bad employee. What, you thought 'private' meant that Facebook wouldn't sell it to anyone who asks? You've obviously not read the Facebook privacy policy.

Re:Yeah, no thanks.

[Opportunist]

And I'd hire him as soon as I find this out. Why?

1) He knows that these things are not for public consumption.
2) He knows that they're jokes.

In other words, he passes the bullshit talk version of the FCC mark. He does not cause it where it matters and can handle it when it happens to him. He's most likely not some mimosa who gets all worked up over someone telling a fucking JOKE while at the same time telling those jokes in privacy without embarrassing me.

Yes, I want that guy.

Re:Yeah, no thanks.

[AuMatar]

I've found the exact opposite. In 17 years, I've gotten one job via my network- and that wasn't because I was a good guy, it was because they knew my skill level and needed my expertise. Every other job I've ever gotten is by pure skill.

I'm not saying don't make friends at work, do that. It makes life more fun. But don't expect you'll ever get a job out of it, the odds of ever working with someone again are pretty vanishingly small.

Umm...they already do

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> Facebook's social aspects could make it easier for potential employers to trawl your profile for details of your personal life

Umm...they already do. That's one of the reasons I quit Facebook years ago. And that was before one of my buddies who works in "gov PR" showed me how he uses Facebook to pinpoint exactly who is whining about what issue - regardless of the "friend" or "privacy" settings they have set up.

Screw Facebook...

[__aaclcg7560]

I don't have a Facebook account. But I do have a LinkedIn account with 800+ connections to recruiters I've talked to or worked with over the last 20+ years of my technical career.

Which one will get me a job? Neither.

Out of all the job search websites out there, Indeed is probably the best one. Especially if you can respond to a job posting within 15 minutes of it being posted. I've gotten many phone interviews and two job offers that way.

Re:Screw Facebook...

[__aaclcg7560]

Then you'd never get hired by me at my company. No Facebook, no job.

That's fine. During an active job search (eight hours per day), I typically talk or email 30+ recruiters per day. I routinely turned down jobs that I don't find suitable.

I want to know everything I possibly can about anyone I plan to pay.

The virtual trail under my legal name stopped in the 1990's. Since then other people with similar legal names have populated the Internet.

Even if you have a Facebook account, if it looks too 'clean' you'll likewise never be hired.

The government didn't care about that when they granted my security clearance. The two big red flags I had was 20+ jobs in a two-year period (the average person isn't an IT contractor who was out of work for two years and filed for chapter seven bankruptcy), and living 10+ years in the same studio apartment (average person moves every two to three years). My two-hour background interview lasted four hours.

The PI firm even gets me personal medical, mental health, military, and DMV records (I don't ask how and don't want to know).

Chinese hackers have my entire background file with more information than that.

Over-sharers nightmare + legal age discrimination

[ErichTheRed]

People are indeed going to have to check their privacy settings (assuming Facebook will allow the Jobs stuff to respect them.) Over-sharers are the obvious target (old sage advice about not posting keg stand videos or political opinions applies here.) But, there's something more insidious -- recruiters will buy access to Facebook Jobs, and start randomly trawling through profiles looking for a match. What happens when they see someone like me, a 41 year old dad with 2 young kids? I can just imagine some 22 year old cold-calling recruiter fresh out of their business degree saying "Oh, let's skip him, he'd never fit in at Company X." It would just be another way to side-step rules on age discrimination. Unlike the stereotypes, I work my butt off to stay current and not be an old stick in the mud. It's a lot of fun being the "adult" in a younger group of peers because I do enjoy sharing knowledge and teaching people. But, I do know that if I'm ever caught out in a layoff situation and don't have any luck with my contacts, I'm pretty stuck when it comes to getting cold recruited for a job. This is why my LinkedIn profile doesn't have a photo, even though I look pretty young.

I wish we could just get beyond the whole recruiter thing. Often, these guys are the only way to get your resume even looked at in big companies, and they're basically sponging off your salary. It's kind of like real estate agents -- they still get a huge commission even though most of their job is now automated (MLS sites replace books of Polaroids, Zillow and friends replace their knowledge of the market, and people generally drive themselves around looking for houses now.) Back in the day, recruiters had the same advantage as intermediaries even though most professionals put some or all of their qualifications out on LinkedIn or similar for people to see. The company I work for uses recruiters, and the worst offenders are the big temp companies they make us recruit through (TEKSystems, etc.) We have had painful interviews with people who have been presented to us as experts and quite obviously have had their resumes doctored by these guys. (And, we're not a bunch of hipster recent CS grads asking stumper questions -- we're looking for generalists with amazing troubleshooting skills mostly.)

Bottom line is that you have to keep the professional network going, lest you be at the mercy of these recruiters.

Facecrap

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

"Facebook Wants To Be the New LinkedIn"

Facecrap wants to be the new everything. Soon it will achieve critical mass and spawn the Singularity.

This is just another way for Facecrap to mine more of your data and suck you dry while it blurs the line between your work life and your personal life. No thank you.