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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?

#31

Post by type0 »

Razengan wrote: post #20
sli wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> one of the conditions of hiring was surrendering her Facebook password. Is that even legal? How? Why?

Might be legal or illegal depending on where you are. But it's awful that it's even a thing. For example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_8_of_the_European_Conv... says:

===========================================

    Article 8 – Right to respect for private and family life

    1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.

    2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
=====================

So basically it's illegal until the authorities deem it to be legal.

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

#32

Post by type0 »

metalmanac wrote: post #6

It depends on the specific company, but lots of companies require a Linkedin profile to submit an application and some companies go as far as requiring an FB profile. And in cases where social media profiles are optional, applications which provide them are viewed slightly more favourably than applications which don't provide social media links. /anecdata

> and some companies go as far as requiring an FB profile.

I personally heard about a few small companies that wanted the employee applicants to submit their resume through fæcebook. And the biggest facepalm was that those were not "social media marketing firms" (whatever that is), but regular businesses.

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

#33

Post by sotojuan »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #5
mattnewton wrote: post #2

Dear god I hope not. I guess I am sheltered as an engineer? I would say no to anyone so fast if they asked for a Facebook or twitter account, and I never have heard of this. Do you have sources on this being a prevalent practice? Have you been asked? Edit: unless you mean Linkedin or something like github as a social account?

unless you mean Linkedin or something like github as a social account? Those count, unfortunately. But I'm skeptical that a "github resume" matters much. LinkedIn seems to matter a lot more strictly for getting offers from recruiters, though.

> But I'm skeptical that a "github resume" matters much.

It doesn't. I don't know why people on HN think it does, but in real life, most people I've worked with ave empty GitHub accounts.

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

#34

Post by toexitthedonut »

sotojuan wrote: post #33
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unless you mean Linkedin or something like github as a social account? Those count, unfortunately. But I'm skeptical that a "github resume" matters much. LinkedIn seems to matter a lot more strictly for getting offers from recruiters, though.

> But I'm skeptical that a "github resume" matters much. It doesn't. I don't know why people on HN think it does, but in real life, most people I've worked with ave empty GitHub accounts.

I've had an interviewer suggest to me that I open a Github account, to improve my chances of getting an offer. After the interview was already over and was already rejected. But I already had an active Github account, and nobody ever asked me in the interview if I had one. So I was confused by the suggestion.

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

#36

Post by fred_is_fred »

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?'.

That's because real estate is 99% relationships and networking. It would be different if you were hiring a chemical engineer. I actually understand this POV.

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

#37

Post by aprdm »

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.

How would you even know that?

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

#38

Post by J-dawg »

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.

This is the worst kind of security requirement, in that it's not only a disgusting abuse of power, it would also be completely useless in stopping someone who really had something to hide.

Just like the recent reports of people being required to hand over their phone passcodes to US border control.

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

#40

Post by newdaynewuser »

I think, in Tech, it doesn't matter because we tend to be more privacy concise. Some of co-workers have never created any social media and accounts and nothing shows up for them when you search for them.

But in other fields it might be different story. My wife is a recruiter for a large hospital. She has told me that while this is not official but usually if an applicant doesn't have social media profile, they usually move to bottom of the list. Most of the recruiters are young there, and they find it weird/suspicious that someone is not easily searchable.

My wife's recommendation is to at least, have a profile with picture and hide everything else.

However, for senior positions, they don't usually care so much for profiles as most of applicants applying for those positions don't really have any social media profiles.

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