Two days ago, I attempted something that turned out to be insightful. Wanting to test my popularity on the internet, I typed my first and last name in the search page of Google and hit the "enter" key on my laptop. In a second, there laid a list of search results including: Tobi Odunowo-Facebook; Tobi Odunowo- LinkedIn; Tobi Odunowo (tobiodunowo) on Twitter; a few other search results and then one that caught my attention had the caption: Head management development & organisation. What?! I wondered how this has got anything to do with me. I clicked on the result and straight away, a page opened. It was the Yatedo homepage that had an outline of profile pictures with short career descriptions. Taking a closer look, I realised these were profiles of top leaders in the area of Talent Management and Organization Development (TM & OD). But how did my profile get on this webpage, I thought [especially when I do not regard myself as a top leader in TM & OD]? I was to later discover that my Yatedo profile had been extracted from my LinkedIn profile. Yatedo (http://www.yatedo.com/) is a search engine intended to help users find and contact anybody throughout the web; and does this mean that if a recruiter is in search of people with a particular experience or background all s/he needs to do is enter key words into the Yatedo search engine and then profiles appear? My new finding changed completely the way I see social networks—the use of my LinkedIn profile, after all, isn’t controlled by me or by LinkedIn. Whatever I have on it (and on other social networking sites I’m subscribed to) matters beyond my social life—it has consequences on my professional outlook too.
A few weeks ago, I uploaded some pictures from some official working sessions on my Facebook page. A close senior colleague called and advised me against it. Recruiters, she said, prefer people who can separate their social life from professional life—indicating that Facebook, and what it’s used for, portrays an individual’s personal life separate from professional life. Whether I saw this perspective as entirely correct or not, a big learning point was the need to awaken my mind and become conscious of the increasing use of social network in search for professionals and subsequent background checks. Top organisations are increasingly utilising the social web-space to achieve many people management goals including search, selection and development of people. If this is the case, it is then wise for every professional to be mindful of what his/her social web-presence tells the world—what is the content on your LinkedIn profile compared with the best CV you ever developed?; what sites (dating and related sites etc.) are you registered on and what do they say about you? How can you use the social web-space to the advantage rather than disadvantage of your professional ambitions without compromising your personal preferences (what and how you use the social network tools)?
You could say "I don't have a social (outgoing, extroverted) personality". You do not need to. As long as you have a presence on social networks, you are a social person! Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn makes you social, albiet virtually. Thus, it is needful to start living with the awareness of your social presence. It is important to learn and apply the right attitude to the emerging realities of the social network and its impact on your professional life. For all you know, social networks might be doing your professional advancement more harm than good! Won't you want to turn that around?
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