Good article from Business Insider showing what Recruiters look at when reviewing a LinkedIn profile via a heat map.  It’s a good refresher course in keeping your profile interesting to those folks you might want to hear from if you’re engaged in a search or even just passively interested in hearing about opportunities.

Typical progression is

Picture – do you have one?  Is it professional?

Status – have you updated it recently?

Current/Past employer in main area – is it properly reflected, and does it actually reveal something about other than the title?

Right side (“Send a message”, etc) – I think this is something of a reflex – there’s nothing you can enter on the right.

References – do you have any and are they relevant?

Here’s the article:

http://www.businessinsider.com/should-you-include-a-picture-on-your-linkedin-profile-2012-5

No one can deny the unstoppable force that is social media has made us all more aware of each other’s lives.  Facebook, LinkedIn and other sites empower us with a level of communication that none of us knew just 10 years ago.

But just like the Amazing Spider-Man, we must exercise great responsibility with that power.  As I mentioned in a prior post, social media is increasingly having adverse effects at work.

Think you’ve got your confidentiality under control?  Are you the MI-6 of Facebook?

This article from the BBC highlights 5 things not to do on Facebook…and, as it turns out, one of the most confidential people in the world – the head of MI-6 himself – found out about one of them the hard way.

The article covers some of the basics – not talking about work, for example – but covers a few less obvious ones as well.

A must-read for any professional participant in Web 2.0.

~DPO

Mom always said, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”

Mom, of course, pre-dates the internet.  Had she been aware of the impact of social media, she might have added “ESPECIALLY on Facebook!”

By now, we all know that social media can both be a powerful tool and an unintentional (and often self-directed) weapon.  You’ve probably already seen the post about the woman who got fired for complaining about her boss here (disclaimer – contains adult language).

While no one save the two participants can tell if the depicted firing actually occurred, a more recent example is making its way into the Connecticut court system.  It seems Dawnmarie Souza was actually fired by American Medical Response for criticizing her supervisor on Facebook.  American Medical Response feels Ms. Souza violated a company policy disallowing “any employee from depicting the company in any way on social media websites without permission.”

The National Labor Relations Board has taken an interest, and filed a complaint on Ms. Souza’s behalf – its first ever on the subject of negative social media postings.  We predict the trend toward litigation will continue – the most applicable case law, like Mom, pre-dates the internet.  The article points out how the relatively new landscape of social media has much nuance to it, and there are multiple ways in which a similar case might differ from Ms. Souza’s.

Just as much as the embarrassing pictures from Mardi Gras can come back to haunt you on Facebook, so too can a status update with a suggestion to your manager about what he or she should do with your job. 

Seems Mom was right after all…

~DPO