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Subscribe to RSSIf you think just keeping your Facebook page free of drunken photos will help you land a job, think again.
Facebook facts that make you look worldly and popular may say more about you to a hiring manager than anything else. Photos of your trip to Bali; status updates on how much you enjoyed reading “War and Peace”; and thousands of Facebook friends apparently translate into a job candidate who will do better on the job.
At least those are the findings of a new study by a trio of universities that looked at how Facebook profiles predict job success.
“We came up with a Facebook personality score and that correlates with job performance,” said Donald Kluemper, a management professor at Northern Illinois University, who, along with researchers at Auburn University and the University of Evansville, conducted the study that appeared in the recent issue of the Journal of Applied Social Psychology.
The researchers looked at five personality traits among Facebook users, including conscientiousness, emotional stability, agreeableness, extraversion and openness. The traits are known as the “Big Five” in psychological lingo and are often used in organizational studies, Kluemper said.
The Facebook users, 56 total, were given a personality score by independent evaluators and six months later those ratings were compared to evaluations completed by the supervisors who the users worked for. And guess what? The higher the Facebook personality score the higher the job performance rating by supervisors.
So what gets you a high personality rating exactly?
Here’s how Kluemper broke it down:
Conscientiousness: This is someone who appears to be well organized and hard-working, and that’s reflected in the way they set up their Facebook page. Maybe there are a lot of detailed posts and profile, or photos of the person working hard at something.
Emotional stability: You seem to be someone who looks at the glass as half full, and seem able to handle stress. That means your page is lacking lots of negative and down in the dumps type posts; and you’re not overly emotional in images or in what you write.
Agreeableness: This is all about someone who’s able to get along and doesn’t engage in Facebook conflicts, especially heated debates with friends.
Extraversion: Here’s where lots of Facebook friends come in handy because lots of friends is a predictor of extraversion. Also, photos of you in social situations with lots of people are a good thing, compared to pictures of you alone on your couch.
Openness: Travel and intellect play into this category. If you appear open to different experiences and viewpoints, then you’re viewed as open. If you’re posting stuff about classic literature you’ll probably score higher than if you’re dishing about the latest trashy novel. And photos of international travel are also a big plus.
Based on this research, scoring high in all these categories means you’re more likely to be an ideal employee. That kind of predictor would probably make any hiring manager salivate, especially in today’s tough job market where they have to weed through thousands of applicants.
Kluemper is not advocating that HR use his groundbreaking social-media research just yet. “This is one study and the sample size is not that large,” he explained. “A lot more studies need to be done.”
But, he admitted some ill-advised HR folks may try and hang their hats on this one study, and that worries him because using such personality tests could be on sketchy legal grounds.
Indeed, personality tests and a host of other pre-employment screenings, including everything from criminal to credit background checks, have come under fire when used in the hiring process because of privacy issues and also because some impact certain groups adversely. Social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn have even made the problem biggerbecause so much information is now available online that the job seekers themselves put out there.
“We’re not advocating employers use this technique,” Kluemper said about the Facebook ratings.
Unfortunately, it may be hard to put the Facebook personality cat back in the hiring bag.
And speaking about cats, if you want to put those adorable videos of kittens on your Facebook page - a popular pastime for many users - keep in mind what you may be projecting into cyber space.
Research by University of Texas at Austin psychologist Sam Gosling found that "dog people are more extraverted, more agreeable and more conscientious than self-described cat people."
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Guess what?! If you don't have a Facebook account you don't have to worry about successfully maintaining a Facebook profile; think of all the wasted time & stress you'll miss! Thankfully, I never trusted Zuckerberg. If a prospective employer doesn't like it that I don't have a Facebook page or that I'm not on Linkedin so they can intrude into where they don't belong, oh well.
I think its funny when people call facebook a waste of time... and yet they have a newsvine profile....
Hmmmmm?????
I am a bit old fashioned and do not want the world to know every thing going on in my life. It is not that eventful or interesting. I am thinking of deleting my Facebook account. Most of the posts are mundane, not of interest and hardly worth my time reading. For reading I enjoy a good thick paper history book.
You are not alone, Jack. Many people are thinking about closing their facebook accounts. In reality, many people who have "fancy accounts with thousands of friends" don't really have any good friends. Their social life also lacks an important aspect: Quality.
FACEBOOK is indicitive of a culture of narcissism. FACEBOOK helps nobody but Zuckerburger.
Want friends, go visit them or use the phone. FACEBOOK is a waste of time. Those who use it most are the ones who work for others and will never achieve their maximum potential.
PHONY relationships, PHONY friends.
Hard to visit friends when they are spread across the country and hard to find a time to call when we all have different production schedules.
Not everybody lives in the same town of 200 that they grew up in.
Funny... my bosses and graduate professors use facebook.
Not really. Only people like you who have shallow lives. Some of us like to keep in contact with people we dont see on a daily basis
Wow. So am I deemed anti-social because I do not have a Facebook profile? Am I viewed as a loner, a loser, a renegade, or someone that does not work well with others? This is beyond ridiculous. It feels like Facebook is being forced upon society, like an virus. Since what little privacy we have left is being chipped away, at least I can control this aspect, for now, until it is a job requirement, or better yet, a local/state/federal mandate, to join Facebook. I'm going to go now and actually talk to someone, in person, and go visit an actual brick and mortar building for a physical cup of coffee.
I do write whatever I want in my Facebook profile. Be it political, social, or even outright mean. And I get away with it and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
Why? Because I'm smart enough not to:
Leave it open to the public.
Put the same name on it I use at work.
It's called Anonymity. It protects you from the stupidity of others. It protects you from yourself.
As a statistician, I have serious doubts about this analysis.
A sample size of 56 is tiny!
Also, consider the definition of "Openness": "Travel and intellect play into this category." No, the only thing we have to go on, in Facebook, is the appearance of travel and intellect.
Ask yourself: How many different types of job could possibly have been covered? How was "success" measured? Do these answers to these questions give confidence that this analysis could be extended to a larger population? I doubt it.
All these articles about facebook profiles helping you getting hired seem to be focused on asking people to open up their accounts to the public which in most cases results in an automatic "no hire". I also have yet to see a hiring manager who even bothers looking at facebook. LinkedIn is a different story, but facebook? I think the article is trying to put numbers around something that doesn't exist.
I do interviews for clients and large corporations myself. My advise is straight forward and simple: Keep your personal life to yourself! This means that you should put strong privacy settings on your facebook account and think twice before you befriend co-workers.
How you portray yourself is how you portray your employer its their reputation on the line also. Best advice dont put it out there period or let yourself get into that position. Think you boss would like to see a little "drunk dance" of yourself etc on the inter net getting passed around?
Facebook is, among other things, a tool for learning and sharing information. People who choose not to use this tool are free to do so, and miss out on certain items of current social relevance. People who use this tool should be aware enough to do so properly - this is the case for any tool - but its ease of use and access mean that many people simply don't grasp all the risks.
Know your tools.
As a lighter observation, I've found many Facebook users are themselves tools...
I see a business opportunity to craft people's fb page. Making them score high in all these criteria. Writing review's for books they never read. Adding lots friends to their accounts. Upbeat positive comments for them to post. This can totally be gamed.
Jay O, I agree totally! That's one very valuable lesson I learned in college, that some professors could be "gamed" and that counted for more of your grade than actual knowledge of course material...
Who fckin cares about a job! I prefer welfare, disability, workers comp, unemployment benefits and lawsuits, and any other easy way to make sum muny to live tha easy life! (gamblings fun!!)
As a cat person I must protest!!! Don't get me wrong, I love dogs too although I don't have one, but if these people had any brains they would agree with what Robert DeNiro said about cats vs. dogs in "Meet the Parents!"
Facebook is a free speech zone where you should be able to goof with your friends and be yourself without big brother watching. I mean,if you have to look over your shoulder all the time, what is the point? Employers need to cut this snooping crap out. In fact, there should be severe legal penalties for doing this type of corpocrap big brother snooping.
I think what the study is aiming at is how socially and emotionally adjusted are potential employees? It's another screening tool that when you post, you're posting to the public (despite the custom screening tools). And whether someone sees the truth in this or not will dictate their success--at work, in life, with their relationships.
What is worrisome is how increasingly dependent we are on interacting with people via 3rd person technology. And how by spending more time there, rather than face-to-face interactions with live people some of us easily forget social etiquette and how to genuinely connect in our relationships. The good news is that learning social, emotional, and gender intelligence is always possible, it's not something that we're innately born with, although the family and environment we grow up in says something about the health of our relationships.
I see facebook like a mirror. I'd argue that others don't see it this way. Just like anonymous posters like creating facades that are/aren't their genuine character, beliefs, and values.
OH SO VERY WRONG RYAN: See my comment below YOUR comment:
ORIGINAL Comment author avatarRyan-1773892
You're right, Facebook is monitored continuously,
by Facebook. Nobody else. Regular businesses like
Joe Schmo Incorporated don't have the ability
to bypass those settings. Sorry to break it to you.
#8.7 - Wed Feb 22, 2012 5:02 PM EST
-----
Oh Ryan! Oh Ryan! Trust me on this...
YOU HAVE NO IDEA just how far the
NSA (National Security Agency) goes
when it comes to "National Security"
and Facebook Data mining !!!
At the major data switches/routers on the
Internet (near the big Domain Name Servers
within the USA and SOME foreign ones)
and at the major state-level phone and net switches
operated by Verizon, Sprint, etc. are devices
called Data Stream/Packet/Protocol Analyzers
which basically COPY every single packet
sent between YOU AT HOME and the
Online Social Network Service
or Communications Network Service provider.
And to DECRYPT any encrypted SSL (Secure Sockets Layer)
or SSL2 web browser sessions, these Stream Analyzers
become MIDDLEMEN encryption key exchange servers
which allow these middle-men servers to issue, re-issue
and pass-forward key-exchange packets which
YOUR computer gives in order to start an
encrypted web browser session.
Ergo, your connections to ANY server is compromised
and all your packets DECRYPTED before being sent
to the Stream Analyzer for further analysis.
Those stream analyzers are connect via stacked
OC-192 (REALLY FAT FIBRE OPTIC PIPES) cables
to various data collection points in the United States
which allows all that data to eventually end up at
*** The Dungeon *** near NSA headquarters in Ft. Meade Maryland
WHERE there are multiple below-ground level MASSIVE computer data
centres (i.e. the world's LARGEST) that contain everything from $50+ Million
Cray-XE/IBM Blue Gene supercomputers to el-cheapo network gridded
Sony Playstation3's and AMD Opteron Linux Clusters to do advanced
data mining AND (here's the kicker!!!) keep a DUPLICATE COPY of
the ENTIRE Facebook, LinkedIn and other Social network websites
on their own servers.
Legally, the NSA has a mandate to keep the INTERNAL security
of the United States...AND...since NSA DOES NOT LEGALLY HAVE
ACCESS to the internal workings of Facebook....they DECIDED....
to duplicate the FACEBOOK DATABASE STRUCTURE ITSELF....and
since they have ALL THE DECRYPTED packets from the Stream Analyzers
coming in from YOUR OUTSIDE FACEBOOK accesses...NSA just updates
their OWN INTERNAL Facebook Database Copy with ALL your photos,
wall posts, and other updates AS YOU UPLOAD THEM...The NSA simply
makes a COPY and subsequent UPDATE of what Facebook gets sent!!!!
AND SINCE THEIR INTERNAL DATABASE HAS NO PRIVACY RESTRICTIONS,
they can just do a simple SQL (Structured Query Language)
database search to find out whatever they want and CORRELATE
friends, web-links, wall posts using BASIC data mining techniques
such as advanced BOOLEAN-TYPE AND/OR/NOT/NEAR/INCLUDE etc
search parameters which CAN find anything REAL FAST!!!
And since the NSA is the world's BIGGEST EMPLOYER of mathematicians
and statistics experts, they've got data mining, data linkage
and data correlation down PAT.
AND for FURTHER INFO....their servers are equipped with
the MOST POWERFUL multi-language speech-to-text and MOST
ADVANCED still image and moving video object recognition
and categorization software PERIOD. FULL STOP.
So your VIDEOS and PHOTOS are also categorized and logged
for statistical analysis to see if YOU really are a threat
to "National Security"...AND ALL those Internal COPIES of
Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, MSN, Friend-Finder, AFF, Match.com
and MANY OTHER online social networking sites are ALL
CORRELATED and LINKED together to form an INCREDIBLY
DETAILED personal profiling system.
For the NSA's daily duties, NOT EVERYONE has a fully cross-linked
"Person-of-Interest-Profile"...because ALL those database links and
text/image/video correlations would create a MASSIVE data-storm that
IS FAR TOO EXPENSIVE to store, so only about 300,000 persons HAVE
such a full-cross-linked Person-of-Interest profile on the NSA servers
...BUT...IF NECESSARY...the system CAN EASILY and fairly quickly within
24 hours EASILY CREATE such a fully cross-linked profile IF REQUIRED!
Ergo...THERE IS NO PRIVACY ON FACEBOOK because the NSA keeps and
maintains its OWN INTERNAL FACEBOOK et al...COPIES based upon data
YOU send to the REAL FACEBOOK et al...AND....All day and all NIGHT,
there are "Software Agents" similar to Google's Website Spider
software which goes through ALL the incoming data and LINKS it to
other database entries and does "Pattern Matching" to see if certain
search criteria is met during each link-search.
FOR EXAMPLE:
If all of a sudden, multiple persons of interest living in
or logging-in within specific geographic area do an excessive amount of
ONLINE CHATTER about ...let's say...WIRES or DIESEL FUEL on their
Facebook and OTHER accounts....that will raise a flag as a possible
bomb-making threat and the analysts will pass the info onto field agents
and law enforcement (i.e. FBI) when necessary.
That is just ONE TINY EXAMPLE of data mining techniques....This
conversation then gets into Financial Transaction mining, and the
International communications interception system called
"Echelon" (Do a Wikipedia/Google search on that!!!!!)
SORRY...BUT ACCESS TO FACEBOOK IS NOT A PROBLEM
FOR THE BIG GUYS --- THAT'S THE WAY IT IS IN THE
REAL WORLD OF SPYCRAFT AND DATA MINING!!!
P.S. MY post here gets intercepted via Echelon
because of flags that match a "Dictionairy" entry
and will get analyzed at Ft. Meade and then
unceremoniously dumped on some poor lackey's
desk who will peruse my other entries within
their profiling system...afterwards said lackey
will then twaddle their thick thumbs pontificating
as to whether the Sloppy Joes in the NSA's main
building Cafeteria are edible today!
P.S.2. Sorry Dungeon Lackey...DNS lookup
is local-network only! NO REAL FACEBOOK FOR YOU!!!!