Over the last few weeks it has been difficult to get away from the unfolding phone hacking scandal at News International. From a careers perspective, privacy is one of the most delicate issues to consider, especially as so much recruitment is conducted virtually, with candidate details held on databases and searches on Google conducted as a matter of course. Managing the information that can be accessed about you is extremely important while looking for work, but also when you are in it. In this arena a little bit motivation can reap tremendous results.
There are laws that offer us all a degree of protection from use of personal information in an inappropriate way. In the United Kingdom the Data Protection Act covers this area of law and although it may be a little cumbersome, it is a useful to be aware of its contents, while in the USA there is not such ‘umbrella’ law as this author understands it, with personal data protection being covered in other pieces of legislation and taken very seriously as a constitutional matter. No amount of law making, however, can stop individuals from usurping themselves. There is actually a page on Facebook filled by tales of how people have been sacked for using the social networking site at work, or as a result of posting information about their workplace and their feelings about it and you do not need to look too far further to uncover your virtual footprint even if you have taken a degree of care when on the web.
Reed has recently published research findings that attest the undecided nature of the use of social media issue within the British workplace. Although the USA boasts the highest use of the medium with Latin America being heralded as the largest emerging market for sites such as LinkedIn, we at the UK do not wish to be outdone in our enjoyment of online networks. While this trend continues to thrive and more and more networking, recruitment and information sharing takes place online, there is also a considerable degree of venting about work, use of inappropriate language and the expression of questionable views that can have considerable affects on your employment status as well as your social standing. Of course, this is something that you have complete control of and can manage appropriately, or can you?
There are a number of steps that you can take to ensure your privacy is protected online. The first of these is to set the relevant privacy settings on the sites you visit for social networking. Each site will have directions on how your privacy settings can be altered and LinkedIn has a very useful User Guide. There are even training courses you can go on to learn to get the best out of the site although the quality of these has not been tested. There is also the element of deciding what you are going to share with your network and what not. A sense of any consequences should you choose to use expletives in relation to a work colleague is sufficient to curtail even the most enraged, so think before you press SHARE.
The flip side of the online privacy coin is that organisations are also using social networking sites with few of the policies and procedures in place that you may expect from them on their own websites. The data management and privacy report recently published in the US highlights some of these issues. On a more practical level it is very possible that even though you have applied the highest levels of security on Facebook, that your liking The Simpson FB Group, for example, means that comments you make to that can identify you and can also appear on Google if you conduct a search for your name. This is a seemingly benign by product of these sites, but it appears to be out of your control and can affect your employment if your choice of entertainment or your sharing of it are deemed inappropriate.
Aside from concern about your activity on social networking sites, there is also some need to consider your footprint on Google. Google has the technology to identify the themes you might generate from a marketing point of view, in a similar way to Amazon (Google has conducted work to ensure that this does not become intrusive and has worked with Privacy International in the past) and software has been available to ‘mine’ for data online unveiling information about you may not wish to share. In a job market so tight when goalposts keep shifting and success depends on the seemingly arbitrary, managing information about yourself has never been more necessary.
Overall some presence online is considered healthy, but depending on your line of work, your position and your job status at the moment it is wise always to remember that you may have a wider audience than you intended. Each of us will have a different level of sensitivity with regards to what we consider private and public. Decide where your line in the sand is before you find it has been breached and take steps to defend it today.
