It’s ok to get drunk
The last Meetdraw was good. If you’re Bournemouth based and work in the tech / web / design sector, you should come along to the next one on Dec 16th.
In this post I am reluctantly reaching the realisation that I’ve moved from “recent graduate” to the “workplace adult” generation… damn.
Anyway… back to the topic at hand: It’s ok to get drunk & why I think that “we”, the workplace generation, need to be more accepting of people having a life before and outside work.
So… at Meetdraw I had a very interesting chat with some students. The thing that most stuck in my head was a conversation about Facebook, privacy and employment.
One of the students said that he was concerned about potential employers seeing content that friends had posted onto Facebook and how this would affect his employment chances.
Taking a photo out of context can imply a different meaning. If we are going to look online to find out more about the people we hire, we have to remember that pictures don’t necessarily reflect the person in question.
But it’s more than that, should we even be looking?
Aside from the ethics of how far it is acceptable to investigate someone generally… I’ve also been considering for a while the implication of looking at someone’s more personal (Facebook for example) information online prior to hiring them…
What if you looked and chose not to hire them, could they claim you had discriminated against them for something you found out by yourself?
Our student acted on the principle that anything online should be considered public, no matter how well you set your privacy settings. I’d always advise thinking on these lines too.
My response was simply, don’t worry too much:
1) There is a need for guidance (maybe even legislation one day?) and restraint on what employers can/should look at prior to hiring.
2) We need to be more accepting of what we find.
Hi Luke, nice post and an interesting question.
Personally I don’t search Facebook when trying to find out about applicants I’m hiring. Facebook is too much about their network, and how they behave in that network, rather than them as a professional individual. I don’t share my Facebook profile with my professional contacts for the same reasons.
I would however have a search on other networks such as Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs to see what they’re reading, what they’re thinking and what they’re saying. It’s nice to find people that have an opinion about things and a unique voice.
Overall though I totally agree with your point – it is OK to get drunk. Yes you can be searched for, but don’t stress, just be open, honest and be yourself afterall, it’s the most interesting people that do the most interesting work.