Kids these days.....

I am fascinated by some of the discussions I see taking place either on Facebook or Twitter. Something caught my eye last night during a job hunting chat that made me wonder just where in the world this is all going.

The "what do employers look for on your Facebook page?" topic came up. Many participants jumped right in with what they suspect companies might be finding - and how they react to those findings.

Being someone who sees many of these issues in black and white - and having an employer's perspective I jumped in. "Set your FB page to private. Problem solved." You'd think that would pretty much cover it, right? Well - it didn't.

A guy jumps in with "Transparency is the key". What? Transparency? Drunk pictures? Your obsession with Lady Gaga? Your string of Farmville lameness? This is what you think highlights you as a candidate? No way!

So in this short little back and forth (with a soon to be college graduate ready to jump into the work force) it dawned on me just how misinformed many of these poor kids are. Employers don't need - and should NOT know every thing about your personal life. It is lunacy to think this does anything other than give employers a reason to pass you by.

It ended on this final note from him: "....it is a social culture now, nothing is private."

Is that where we are? Nothing is private? Have these kids no sense of discretion? Who is telling them this? Where do we go from here?

Comment by Karen Siwak on April 26, 2011 at 12:10pm: Age doesn't automatically grant wisdom, but it does give perspective. There are consequences for being transparent and letting it all hang out. Just as the guy who farted at the company cocktail party was known forevermore as gassy, there are long term consequences to what you choose to share about yourself today, and it will continue to be be used to define you long after you've matured and moved on.

Comment by Frank Zupan on April 26, 2011 at 12:24pm: Jerry,

Not only is your Klout score dropping, there's also a run on your share price on Empire Ave. You probably should have let the sleeping kiddies nap a little longer.

Comment by Sandra McCartt on April 26, 2011 at 12:55pm: The comment i had to laugh at last night on that mess was the little girl who wanted everybody to connect but was tweeting not to put your contact information on the chat because everybody could find it.

Some more seasoned fellow tweeted, "If you don't want to be found, get off of social media".

Therein lies a great truth.

I would also add it would be a good idea to do a quick review of the folks who are giving all this great advice. Is someone who is a few years out of school and has bounced around with several recruiting firms really a job search coach and a social media expert. Maybe so but from my perspective there is a lot of misguided information being flopped out there that seems to be some self promotion for a paying gig. One does get what one pays for in most cases. Or maybe not.

Comment by Valentino Martinez on April 26, 2011 at 2:03pm: Twitter, Facebook, U-Tube--for good, for bad, and for very bad—represent the convergence of mediums amped by new technology capabilities, among other things, that can go against the sage advice given to all by mothers who cared enough to warn, “Honey, always wear clean underwear because you never know…”--when dirty laundry can be exposed.

Interestingly, besides mom, this future state was predicted in the '60s... by Andy Warhol, who said in 1968 that, "In the future, everyone will be world-famous (or infamous...my thought) for 15 minutes”; and by “Marshall McLuhan who in 1964 coined the phrase The medium is the message meaning that the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived”. (Wikipedia)

The youth culture, in particular, now interface in these mediums of instant exposure which is further driven by the ultimate game of TAG...You're It! Or I’m It!...for the moment. Interestingly you can be tagged by Friends, Family, Strangers and Unfriends. And you can Self-Tag in a journey of discovery and self-discovery that boggles the curious minds that feed and are fed into these mediums where Yum and Dumb become one and the same.

As this all relates to transparency, recruitment, background checks and stupidity? Well, “Kids these days…”

Comment by Susan Hand on April 26, 2011 at 2:30pm: Jerry your last comment is brilliant, and made me laugh. I think my 3 year old niece put it perfectly over Easter dinner. I asked what are you doing. She responded with her princess cell phone--Oh I'm taking a picture and going online to send it to you. OH to facebook I said--- She said OH NO facebook is the place where kids can get hurt from fake people roaming around looking for a reason to Hate them---oops the H word is Not a nice word and I meant Hurt them, My mum's work doesn't even let her on it.

Comment by Sarah Calverley on April 27, 2011 at 7:05am: I whole heartedly agree with you Jerry, having seen a case where an employer (legal firm) rejected an application because of what was on the applicants public facebook page. It's hard to back up this kind of example with stats because it isn't necessarily discussed with the applicant, although we all know it happens an awful lot.

Comment by Paul Alfred on April 27, 2011 at 8:56am: Good point Jerry - That is why I think the facebook profile has to be private and your public profile on LinkedIn Public you can't use my name to find me on facebook only my family and close friends know my nickname to find me on Facebook...

I think if you use facebook for business you need to make a decision very early on that your public professional profile on Facebook be clean and can't be used against you in the Future .... My 2 cents.

Comment by Peter Gold on April 28, 2011 at 3:43pm: Were we never young and stupid once? Did we forget the things we did? Come on all, lighten up a little. We all made mistakes when we were young, never listened to "old" people, and can now look back and realise how wrong we were. It's called growing up; maybe give them a bit of slack? Yeah they may hang themselves but do you really want to sound like your parents?

Comment by Jerry Albright on April 28, 2011 at 3:53pm: Peter - the huge difference is when I was young not only did I hide the embarrassing things I did from my parents - it never occurred to me that I should collect a library of photos, thoughts, activities and such in order for the rest of the world to see.

Again - the key word is discretion. I just don't think the younger folks have any. And it's priceless....