As you can see, I support full disclosure and full commitment to reality as it is, not as we wish to present it to employers or others. And I stand behind my original point: be a man (or a woman) and use your real name online. Or, if you're not prepared to stand behind it, stop what you're saying/doing/professing.Jack wrote:Below is the text from an email that the Career Adviser of my college recently sent out. She contends that having personally unflattering information on facebook is a bad thing because it will prevent prospective employees from getting a job: I disagree sharply. Posted below is her email (which is in bold print in order to help distinguish) and then is my response.
The Résumé
Today, majority of college students have Facebook or Myspace. Facebook and Myspace are great ways for social networking but you might as well hand your interviewer your résumé as well as your Facebook profile. An increasing number of employers are looking at Facebook pages before hiring. Business and Facebook don’t mix well. This doesn’t mean that you can’t maintain a Facebook profile, but you will need to filter everything that you have on your page. Before your job search, consider revising your Facebook by following these tips (for more information, click on the links below each tip):
Remove any pictures that contain unprofessional behavior such as binge drinking or revealing clothing – Laurie Sybel, a director of career development at Vermont Technical College, remembers a situation in which a student was rejected for a job based on a Facebook picture featuring him holding a bottle of Vodka. The company said not only was it illegal, posting the picture showed bad judgment.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/46419/page/1
Revise any comments that may be taken the wrong way –Tien Nguyen’s job search was unsuccessful until he realized that his online article, entitled “Lying Your Way to the Top”, was deterring employers from hiring him.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/us/11recruit.html
Be aware of what your friends post about you -Elyse Umemoto, former Miss Washington, almost lost her crown when someone posted photos of her drinking while wearing her crown.
http://drphil.com/articles/article/556/
Use your Facebook to promote a good image about yourself by listing clubs, volunteer activities, etc. –Catherine Germann of the Rochester Institute of Technology used her Facebook in a positive manner by revising it so that it would promote her career.
http://www.collegegrad.com/press/myspace.shtml
Dear Ma'am,
With all due respect, I disagree sharply with the underlying philosophy of your email below, on many ethical, psychological and economic points.
For example: if a student is a binge drinker and has many photos posted online, her or his employee deserves to know that. When I hire someone to work for me, I am hiring the whole person. Likewise, when I apply for a job, I expect to be completely honest and upfront about all areas of my life with my prospective employer. If an employer will deny me a job because I have pictures of myself kissing my significant other online, or because I have radical political quotes on my profile, so be it.
>>>Use your Facebook to promote a good image about yourself by listing clubs, volunteer activities, etc.
I understand where this train of thought comes from; yet at the same time it encourages dishonesty and a certain fundamental philosophical disavowal of reality, plus a deeply compromised self-concept.
I contend that if individual X feels that she or he must volitionally "polish" her or his image in order to make her- or himself more presentable to the world, she or he must necessarily therefore feel as though she or he has some things to hide, some things of which to be ashamed, some things that are better left unsaid, and/or is not really the person she or he is presenting. I contend that this attitude is vastly inappropriate for today's global business world.
In our capitalistic environment, those people who really ARE solid individuals in their personal lives and who really ARE solid in terms of qualifications for hiring do not feel obliged to hide anything: only those who are lesser in either area must cover-up their Facebook profiles or take information away.
Those of us who respect reality enough to know that if we are denied a certain job because of a drunken picture on Facebook, we deserve it because we really did get drunk and we really did put it on Facebook. In other words, a respect for full reality is to be encouraged: in this way and only in this way will the most successful and most able individuals carry the economy forward.
Encouraging prospective employees to "cover up" their illicit activities and interests so that they can compete with those who do not have those same illicit activities or interests is nothing more than a dilute form of socialism: I decry this.
My Facebook profile says nothing that isn't true about me. It has many unflattering aspects, of course, but it is fundamentally true. I am drunk in many of my pictures, and I am half-naked in others. I own that, I accept that, and if you hire me you should know that is what you're getting.
Much peace,
Jack Garcia
Berea, KY
P.S. I am gladly posting this email on my Facebook profile.
Don't say others are jealous of your name when you are not even prepared to use it to back up that accusation!
And even the people who have met me call me Izzy when speaking to me outside of the Chiff. So I think I can claim it to be my real name based on all that 
eh 
