Point: Erik Edlund

Social Media is your life. It’s your friends. It’s your expressions. It’s your memories. It shows you in your personal life. Social media is all about you. No one should base their decisions about you based solely on your profile and blogs. It makes no sense to hire you on the basis of what you do and say in your own private life.

In California and many other state’s social media protection laws prevent employers from reviewing an applicants or employee’s private social media information. If your profile isn’t on private already please do so immediately. That’s the only way to keep employers and potential employers from snooping at your profile.

Your boss, human resources, or whoever, shouldn’t go out of their way to look up what you’re posting online about your social life. Its unequivocally unacceptable to do that to a hard working employee that prides themselves in their professional work. Personal and professional lives never should intertwine. Many people already know how to distinguish between those two main differences.

Job seekers need to be aware that employers will go to extremes to find out who they’re hiring but what if the roles were reversed? What if the job seeker went online looking up the interviewers social media sites and had the power to remove them from their job based on what was seen?

Even tough there is a law by many states for employers to stop hiring based on social media, that doesn’t prevent people from stopping. It’s now known that 92% of United States companies now use social media and other social networks when looking for employees, up from 78% five years ago.

I remember not being hired a few times because of what the potential employers discovered online. One job seemed like it was just in the palm of my hand, but at the very end of the interview the interviewer asked me if I had a Myspace or Facebook and I told him,”yes, Myspace.” He asked me to leave the room and a little while later had me return. He seemed unhappy with what he found and explained that I wasn’t a good fit for the job. At that time I was going through a breakup and I was lashing out on my profile against my ex and posting provocative pictures of women. From there on out I learned to make sure everything I posted online was private.

Even though social media sites are relatively new that doesn’t give businesses the right to do as they please. All the laws haven’t been worked out yet but when it does and people continue to hire or fire on the basis of what they see online they could see themselves in court. Never stop being an equal opportunity employer.

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Counterpoint: Rebeka Nop

Is it right for your future or current employers to search you on Facebook, Twitter or any other social media outlet before hiring or promoting you? Probably not.

However, if you were willing to spend minutes, hours and even days to perfect how you portray yourself online, knowing that it’s public knowledge, can you really blame them?

There’s a very thin line between your personal life and your work life. Sometimes the two worlds will collide and affect the other. An employer has every right to not hire or promote you based on how you promote yourself.

Social media has become such a huge part of our lives. In a way, it depicts our very beings. On social media platforms, you are able to be the person you’ve always wanted to be or you can be someone completely different. The choice is yours.

The point is, you have full control over what you put or post on Facebook, Twitter or even Instagram. You have the ability to showcase yourself and your skills. It’s completely fair to base some of your qualifications on how you’re representing yourself.

What you do on a daily basis is your business but what you post on Facebook or Instagram can affect your company’s business. You are a representation of the company you work for. Any negative attention you bring onto yourself can be a negative reflection on your company.

We post our best and worst days on Facebook. It’s your Facebook, you have every right to post whatever you’d like but there’s a certain professionalism that needs to be considered, especially if your Facebook isn’t set on private. Unlike at work, Facebook allows you to speak “write” your every thought and express all of your feelings without getting reprimanded.

Although social media allows you to speak your mind, it doesn’t mean that what you say or do cannot be used against you.