ShareThisIt's to your advantage to be social-site savvy.By now you know that what you do online can have adverse repercussions at work. There's the Arlington, Ore., mayor whose citizens called for her resignation after she posed in her undies aboard the town's fire truck and the photos found their way to MySpace. The Ottawa grocery store workers who got canned for negative comments on Facebook.Indeed, what you post on social-networking sites can spell trouble for your career. But with a little bit of savvy and a lot of discretion, they can also help you land that promotion or next job, says Ross Johnston, vice president of new business development at Dotster, an Internet business service provider that developed the networking tool Dotster Connect (dotster.com/connect).In a call from his Orlando office, Johnston explained how to use social networking sites to your professional advantage:- Keep the photos safe for work. That wild night you had downtown? Don't put it up. Instead, post a professional head shot.- Avoid too much information, or TMI. If your favorite book is "The Complete Illustrated Kama Sutra" and your favorite quote is by Robert Mugabe, keep it to yourself. Recruiters also don't need to know what you're doing every second, like "Jane is going to lunch," so avoid the Twitter effect. And unless you're applying for a job in the media or entertainment industry, keep music off your site.- Show off your writing skills. Be brief and use complete, correct English -- not Internet shorthand -- to show that you can write professionally.- Flaunt your networks. If you're affiliated with a university, professional organization or volunteer group, let it be known in your profile. Accept friend requests from colleagues, but keep that boozing frat buddy of yours off your page.- Stream video. Include a clip of yourself explaining your strengths, achievements and other pertinent information, as you would in a face-to-face job interview. "People really get a sense of who you are from that," Johnston says. "You don't see it very often, but you know the person's fairly tech-savvy. It speaks to their desire to get the job, their motivation and their level of knowledge of the Internet."- Get your own Web site. Don't bother rehashing your resume on MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Ning and all the rest. Instead, post a link on these sites to drive traffic to your own professional Web site, where you summarize your resume, link to papers you've written, and showcase relevant photographs and artwork in one convenient spot for recruiters. "It will not waste a recruiter's time, and the recruiter will reward you for that," Johnston says. Besides, he adds, "You're going to want to be able to control your data. If you have a blog or if you have a forum and people are chatting on it, you probably want it on your servers, not on MySpace's servers because if MySpace gets sold, really you don't control the data."- Shamelessly plug. If you still want recruiters to check our your social networking page, then highlight it on your Web site and via e-mail, and optimize Internet searches for your name.E-mail Dalia Colon at dcolon(at)tampabay.com (Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service www.scrippsnews.com)
It's to your advantage to be social-site savvy
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