Social Networking and the Workplace

Social Networking and the Workplace

Craig Hill

St. Edward’s University

A-HRM-332

[ November 23, 2009 ]

Helene Claudille, Ph.D.

Social Networking and the Workplace

Since the beginnings of early civilization, people have always strived to find better ways to communicate. As humans, we are driven to form bonds with other people. We seek out like minded individuals or others with common interests. These bonds were essential in the beginning for our survival and the continuation of our species. As evolution moved forward, our methods for communicating and forming bonds also evolved. The invention of the telegraph drastically altered the landscape of communication by allowing humans to communicate with each other in span of days rather than weeks. Our need to communicate has fueled a communications revolution that has moved beyond the days of the telegraph and into the era of social networking. Social networking offers us the unique ability to communicate with others on all aspects of our life. From updates on the mundane happenings in our day to pictures of our latest night out, social networking proves to be more than just a tool to communicate. Social networking is allowing people to define and express a personal image for the whole world to view if they so choose. Social networking has its risks and people should be aware their employers or potential employers could be viewing their sites looking for information. However, if used properly, social networking can be a powerful tool to market yourself to potential employers.

Social Network sites, are not necessarily a new concept. With the explosion of the World Wide Web in the 1990’s, computer savvy individuals were creating personal homepages that were easily searchable. However, in order to create an attractive web page, a person would require some basic Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) skills plus some knowledge of the different networking protocols just to create a rudimentary...