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Ask HN: Does lack of a social media presence harm employment chances?

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Re: Ask HN: Does lack of a social media presence harm employment chances?

#21

Post by lkrubner »

I have a blog and no employer has ever looked at it, even though I list the blog on my resume.

I walk into interviews and the interviewer often starts off by asking something basic such as "Do you know what object oriented programming is?"

My best known essay is "Object Oriented Programming Is An Expensive Disaster Which Must End." The essay was discussed here on Hacker News:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8420060

Anyone who Google's my name will discover this and many other essays. Yet I've never met an interviewer who knew that I wrote these essays.

When I started the blog I kept it strictly professional and strictly about technology. But as the years went by, I realized that no employer would ever look at it, so I started posting political things. At first I worried that employers would see this and avoid me because of the politics. But no. I routinely walk into job interviews and the people who talk to me have never looked online for any information about me.

Seriously, in the last 10 years I've had 6 jobs and 30 freelance clients. None of them every looked me up before I arrived for the interview.

Re: Ask HN: Does lack of a social media presence harm employment chances?

#22

Post by lkrubner »

onion2k wrote: post #16

I think it does harm you not to have a profile, but only indirectly. Employers will search for you. Having no profile means you're missing out on an opportunity to make an impression before the interview - candidates with posts about things they find interesting in job-related fields, or status updates that make them look like sociable, interesting people, will benefit from that. Having no profile puts you behind tho…

"Employers will search for you."

I said this in a separate comment, but I want to read this here, in response to what you said. In the last 10 years, I've never had an employer search for me online. Never.

Re: Ask HN: Does lack of a social media presence harm employment chances?

#23

Post by onion2k »

lkrubner wrote: post #22
onion2k wrote: post #16

I think it does harm you not to have a profile, but only indirectly. Employers will search for you. Having no profile means you're missing out on an opportunity to make an impression before the interview - candidates with posts about things they find interesting in job-related fields, or status updates that make them look like sociable, interesting people, will benefit from that. Having no profile puts you behind tho…

"Employers will search for you." I said this in a separate comment, but I want to read this here, in response to what you said. In the last 10 years, I've never had an employer search for me online. Never.

I've had several search for me. I know this because they've raised it in interviews, asking things like "The library you tweeted about is interesting. Where would you use that?"

Re: Ask HN: Does lack of a social media presence harm employment chances?

#24

Post by salesguy222 »

sli wrote: post #17
RickS wrote: post #12

Anecdotally, both as a hirer and hiree, I'd say the answer is no, it's not important. I can't think of a time a social profile has made or broken a hire on my end, and I've been hired despite having a locked IG, a mostly blank linkedin, no FB or snapchat, and a twitter that's mostly me griping unattractively. Grain of salt, though, I'm in a field where a portfolio is required upfront, so that replaces a huge amount o…

It varies pretty wildly. A friend of my mother applied for a job doing clerical work at the city police station, and one of the conditions of hiring was surrendering her Facebook password. For some reason I'll never understand (she didn't need the job, just wanted something to do during the day), she took the job.

If true, which this probably is, this is absolutely pig disgusting.

Local police forces are literally legalized mafias, and they lack pretty much all preventive oversight.

Their thirst for tax money and control of the local populace is so evident that one need only google around for cases of murder, cover ups, militarization, steroids.... you name it, local police departments have controversy in spades.

That they are now requiring your password to a digitized and synced database of all your contacts, conversations, and photos..... it shows how thirsty they are for allegiance and control, not public safety.

Re: Ask HN: Does lack of a social media presence harm employment chances?

#25

Post by mdlap »

lkrubner wrote: post #22
onion2k wrote: post #16

I think it does harm you not to have a profile, but only indirectly. Employers will search for you. Having no profile means you're missing out on an opportunity to make an impression before the interview - candidates with posts about things they find interesting in job-related fields, or status updates that make them look like sociable, interesting people, will benefit from that. Having no profile puts you behind tho…

"Employers will search for you." I said this in a separate comment, but I want to read this here, in response to what you said. In the last 10 years, I've never had an employer search for me online. Never.

My last two employers mentioned searching for me online. Or rather, they brought up the results of the search.

Re: Ask HN: Does lack of a social media presence harm employment chances?

#27

Post by nthcolumn »

Anecdotal evidence: I was at a rugby weekend dads/sons thing. You meet other dads from all walks of life, everything from navy captains to surgeons. One evening, one dude, apropos of nothing whilst banging on about his successful real estate business said that he would not hire someone who did not have a facebook account. I was like 'wat? really?'.

Re: Ask HN: Does lack of a social media presence harm employment chances?

#28

Post by J-dawg »

nthcolumn wrote: post #27

Anecdotal evidence: I was at a rugby weekend dads/sons thing. You meet other dads from all walks of life, everything from navy captains to surgeons. One evening, one dude, apropos of nothing whilst banging on about his successful real estate business said that he would not hire someone who did not have a facebook account. I was like 'wat? really?'.

This is both scary and interesting. Did you get the chance to discuss it with him further? I wonder how prevalent this sort of thinking is.

What's he actually trying to achieve? Presumably in most cases when he searches all he'll see is a name and a thumbnail photo, given that most people these days have at least a little concern about online privacy. Unless he's actually 'friending' all his candidates before he hires them, which would be super weird.

Also, doesn't Facebook have a setting where your profile doesn't show up in searches? So he could potentially be rejecting people that actually meet his own (weird) requirement.

Or maybe I'm reading too much into what was probably just pub talk!

I'm going to start to make a point of discussing tech-related subjects with non-technical friends more often, because their opinions often surprise me. Case in point: Theresa May's quest to ban maths.

Re: Ask HN: Does lack of a social media presence harm employment chances?

#29

Post by type0 »

J-dawg wrote: post #28
nthcolumn wrote: post #27

Anecdotal evidence: I was at a rugby weekend dads/sons thing. You meet other dads from all walks of life, everything from navy captains to surgeons. One evening, one dude, apropos of nothing whilst banging on about his successful real estate business said that he would not hire someone who did not have a facebook account. I was like 'wat? really?'.

This is both scary and interesting. Did you get the chance to discuss it with him further? I wonder how prevalent this sort of thinking is. What's he actually trying to achieve? Presumably in most cases when he searches all he'll see is a name and a thumbnail photo, given that most people these days have at least a little concern about online privacy. Unless he's actually 'friending' all his candidates before he hire…

> I'm going to start to make a point of discussing tech-related subjects with non-technical friends more often, because their opinions often surprise me.

And you would be shocked to hear all the misconceptions and myths that the general populace have been fed by the media or picked up from someone at work with Dunning-Kruger effect. It's pointless to try convince them otherwise unless they are your close friends or family.

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