Internet never forgets... :)

I got an interesting email from a premier career-development website today. It went on to say why social media is a double-edged knife... while it lets you express, share and discover there is also the inherent danger of letting out way too much!

For instance, if you are using Facebook or Twitter to update the world everytime you are irritated at your boss, chances are high that the next time you are out in the job market, potential employers treat this as an attitude problem and not contact you at all! The email infact provided relevant statistics based on a survey it conducted amongst several recruiters in the North American market. I am not sure how much this applies to the Indian scenario but the trend will soon catch up... mostly in the IT space to start with.

Come to think of it, in the last 3 months, whenever I had to interview a candidate, I have always checked his/her LinkedIn and Twitter profiles (if any) before even starting the interview.. and asked questions based on whatever I saw on their profiles. It was surprising how unconscious I was about the way I personally use social media and this email I got today was like a wake-up call...

So, here's to anyone who reads this post... be careful on what you put on your social status... if you do not want to talk about something standing in the middle of your office's lunch room... you probably should not be putting it on FB or orkut. Internet has ears & eyes all over the place in the form of umpteen businesses that are making life easier and easier for others to search your content on the web. The Web 2.0 elephant can remember very well and it's memory is so powerfully indexed that your boss can fire you for bitching about the company on FB so quickly, that by the time your friends see it, you would probably be jobless!!