This week I learned how to create a Facebook page that can be used for professional purposes. I have developed my page to reflect some information about my education, work experience, awards and other activities and interests. I also included my contact information so that anyone interested can get a hold of me. My page is similar to having an online resume, but I have not included all the same information that I would send to a potential employer in a resume because I do not want to reveal all of my private life and information to whoever may like to view my page. It just contains a basic background that can catch someone's interest and cause them to want to contact me for more information.
This page will be separate from my Facebook profile which contains more personal, private information that I would only like friends and family to see. Having a page is a great way to keep my personal and public/work life separate. I can control which information I want people to see about me without the other, extra information about my facebook friends and other posts that would be on my profile page.
In a fellow students
blog, Julie Lackowicz talks about how common-place Facebook has become for our generation and how it has become quite likely for a guy or girl to ask for your Facebook rather than your number. There are many celebrities and organizations using Facebook to create pages to generate more interest and publicity. I found a
site that has measured and rated the most engaging pages currently on Facebook. One of the top ones was Justin Biebers page, amongst all of the religious pages. I found this quite intriguing but it is a great demonstration of who the most avid Facebook users are; teenage girls. The popularity of Justin Bieber's page supports Julie's thoughts on how commonplace Facebook is for teenagers to use and communicate.
Personally, I think Facebook pages is a good way to present yourself to potential employers, but is not the best way. This is because I think Facebook is more of a personal social network of one's private life, not professional life. Using Facebook pages still feels like I am crossing some boundaries between private and work life. Therefore I prefer to use LinkedIn, where it is a social network designed specifically for work. I just recently found out how powerful LinkedIn really is; my father was recently recruited by SMART Tech via LinkedIn after they briefly met during a work conference. He told me to make a LinkedIn account because being recruited was one of the best things that happened to him, since he did not even apply for the job.
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