Robert Wierzbicki

English 1102
Professor Padgett
Date
Social Media in the Workplace
For just over a decade, social media has changed the way that we, as humans,
communicate, share and expose our daily lives. People tend to share life altering moments such
as relationships statuses or having children, to simple backyard pool parties or wild nights out in
the town. Once users share things about their lives it is the comments that become next. Social
media is designed to have something similar of your own webpage. Post what you want, say
what you want and discuss what you want. The most popular of media sites, Facebook , allows
someone to do just that. Facebook is the leading social media site over the past decade with the
most users worldwide. All social media, including Facebook, play a significant role in your
employment status.
With the access of technology becoming more and more vulnerable to searching
everyone and anyone, it only takes a simple Google search of a name to start your research on
someone. Many employers are doing simply that. Lets take a scenario of you going on an
interview and you feeling like it went very well. You come home and tell your friends or family
that you really felt like you got the job. After a few days of waiting for the phone to ring it finally
happens. The company you interviewed with has a human resource administrator tell you that
they have decided to go a different direction but they will keep your resume on file for any future
openings the company may have. Now you claimed the interview went well. You have the
necessary qualifications that they require. What went wrong? Did you maybe go to party over the
Comment [AP1]: Who else would we be?
Comment [AP2]: Try to avoid these kinds of
ambiguous words for more specific ones.
Comment [AP3]: The usage if this verb is
throwing me here.
weekend? Maybe posting the picture of you and your buddy doing a lot of shots was not a good
idea. The point of the scenario is that in todays world of technology and social media frenzy, it
allows just about anybody to really see what kind of person you are off the screen. With the
hiring process becoming tighter to fill positions employers are taking advantage of the easy
access of social media to select proper candidates for their positions.
Evidence to support that employers use social media as a hiring process tactic can be
supported by Kashmir Hill of Forbes magazine. Kashmir says if you dont like the person there
(on Facebook), you probably wont like working with them. In Careersbuilder.coms survey,
63% of managers who used social networking websites did not hire the person based on the
negative things they found on their profile. Employers typically find information about a
candidates lifestyle and hobbies that would possibly take up time that could be used to work.
Employers also have to worry about how this applicant can make a positive or negative impact
on the company name.
In the Journal of Business and Psychology, they also indicate that there is an enormous
rise of usage of social media sites playing a big role in the prescreening process of hiring new
employees. Whether the use of this hiring practice is meant to find good or bad behaviors of
potential candidates the fact remains that employers are in fact researching their potential new
hires and even existing employees on the web. Employers have many risks and consequences to
consider when researching their candidates on media sites. If an employer chooses this method,
they could be faced with not having an accurate portrayal of an individual and also if they choose
to not hire a person, they will not be able to defend themselves against claims indicating that
what they saw online may not be job related.
When already hired and currently employed by a company it is not always safe to say that
Comment [AP4]: Can you condense this
into fewer words? Seems like a mouthful here.
Formatted: Font: Italic
Comment [AP5]: So what are you saying?
What relevance does this have on the hiring
process? Do you think employers shouldnt be
looking candidates up?
a job is secure. Many employees face the danger of potentially losing their employment status
for comments or complaints they post on their profiles. In fact, there are many cases out in the
country where employees are now suing a company for wrongful termination or invasion of
privacy because a company terminated them based what they posted on their profile. Personally,
I can understand if an employer wants to use Facebook, Twitter or any other social media site to
prescreen their candidates, but I find it to be some sort of invasion of privacy if an employer
were to terminate someone for statements made on their profile pages. Social media is meant to
spread your personal life out into the open, however they key word stated is personal. The
posts that are made on a social WebPages are between the user, friends and family. I do not think
an employer should be poking their heads into business that isnt theirs.
Celeste Headlee of Talk of the Nation interviewed a labor laws expert reporter for the
New York Times named Steven Greenhouse. Steven Greenhouse is a credible source that
indicates there are dos and donts to posting and information about your workplace. For
example, it is okay to say negative things about your workplace as long as other employees of
the company are in the thread and there are no specific names mentioned. Talk about your
workplace with anyone and mention specific names could be grounds for termination. There
have been laws put in place for both the employee and employer regarding social media by
National Labor Relations Board. The laws that protect both the employer and the employ are
what most would consider gray areas. No matter the laws that protect the employer, the labor
board has more cases protecting the employee rather than the employer. Many reasons such as if
the employee was able to conduct their required tasks or if the employee brought hostile work
environment into the workplace. Situations like that these leave an employer with no choice but
to face wrongful termination suit however companies have an image to protect when an associate
Comment [AP6]: Okay, so it seems as
though you are adopting a secondary thesis.
Comment [AP7]: This needs citation.
is displaying negative feedback about the organization. With all that being said, concrete
evidence needs to be submitted that an employees personal profile page is effectingaffecting the
companys image, reputation, other employees and revenue potential.
In the New York Times there was an article written by Alan Finder. Credible
professionals, recruiters and CEOs who have confessed to using social media websites to select
their candidates explain that there is no way to really get to know someone unless you catch
them off guard. Brad Karsh who is a small consulting firms president based out of Chicago
claims that using Facebook to recruit gives him the opportunity to really think about his potential
employee. He says what kind of judgment does this person have?Why are you allowing this to
be viewed publicly, effectively, or semi-publicly? When asking these questions he was
referring to a potential candidate that displayed photos of him smoking a blunt (hoallowed
cigar with marijuana inside). Pictures of inappropriate sexual content were also visible to just
anyone, including Brad. When a recruiter, president or hiring manger sees this content they
nearly second guess their judgment of consideration for a candidate.
The facts are simple. In todays society, social media changes the way we, as humans,
communicate, keep up with latest trends and even conduct business. Even with all these
advantages that modern technology has supplied for us, there does come a cost. When our lives
are easily exposed to the World Wide Web in the form a social media sites it leaves us
vulnerable to judgmental people. Whether the judgment is on a friend, family or colleague, it
could go on even further to a potential job opportunity that we seek. The privacy settings in our
social media profiles pages are just not enough for someone to find out any information about a
particular person. Employers are using this method to select candidates and I can only imagine
that it goes deeper than this. Think about school acceptance processes. If employers are using
Comment [AP8]: Im having trouble figuring
out which words are the sources and which
are yours. You need in-text citation here.
Comment [AP9]: Not sure that this needs
defining.
Comment [AP10]: Sounds very
conspiratorial.
Facebook, MySpace , Ttwitter or any other form of social media to select the new hires,
wouldnt it make sense for prestigious universities to use this method to accept a potential
freshmen? The possibilities are endless when it comes to technology, let alone social media.
Once you post your business or lifestyle, it is on the internet for good; for all to see.



















Works Cited Page
Daniloff, Caleb. "Facebook Got Me Fired ." BU Today RSS. Boston University, 08 July 2011.
Web.
Headlee, Celeste, and Steven Greenhouse. "Social Media And Work: Is It Ever OK To Complain
Online?" KDLG. N.p., 09 Feb. 2013. Web. 09 Mar. 2014. <http://kdlg.org/post/line-
between-freedom-speech-and-fireable-offense>.
Russo, Emily. "How Employers Use Social Media to Hire Employees | Social Raising (The
Coudrain Group)." Review. Web log post. Word Press. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Mar. 2014.
<http://socialraise.wordpress.com/2013/04/11/how-employers-use-social-media-to-hire-
employees/>.
Brown, Victoria R., and E. Daily Vaughn. "The Writing on the (Facebook) Wall: The Use of
Social Networking Sites in Hiring Decisions - Springer." Journal of Business and
Psychology 26 (2011): 219-25. The Writing on the (Facebook) Wall: The Use of Social
Networking Sites in Hiring Decisions - Springer. 04 May 2011. Web. 09 Mar. 2014.
<http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10869-011-9221-x#page-1>.


Finder, Alan. "For Some , Online Persona Undermines a Resume." Editorial. The New York
Times 11 June 2006: n. pag. Web.
Bobby,
Comment [AP11]: Im confused, do you
ever actually reference this source in the text?
Why are you using it here? Im not sure of her
credentials; this seems like a random
wordpress site.
Formatted: Indent: Left: 0", Hanging:
0.5"
I think you have written an interesting and worthwhile essay here. I really like the various points
of view that you discuss and how you make those voices salient and relevant to your
discussion. You are missing a good deal of your in-text citation, and so, consequently, I
am having difficulty discerning whose voice is whose. Also, there are a couple of sources
in your works cited page that I dont think you are referencing in your actual essay. You
thesis is interesting, but you seem to have dueling theses, which is a little confusing. On
one hand this seems to be a call to attention for younger people who arent as aware of
the ramification of what they put out there on the internet, and then you seem to shift into
an argument about the ethical implications of a company prying into our personal lives to
make a hire/fire decision. The latter seems to me the one you are most interested in (and
for that matter, I am too). I would like for you to take a harder stance. Choose one of
these theses and really argue hard for it. I do like some of the sources that you have, but
Id like to see more peer-reviewed (of which you have one). Formatted: Font: Not Bold, No underline