Ok, so I'm a pretty bad blogger for not updating, leaving my blog dry as my mom's thanksgiving turkey, so to tide you guys over I'm just going to cheat and post an excerpt of my Affirmative case for the upcoming debate season.
The topic is resolved: Standards of professional behavior ought to be valued over freedom of expression on social networking sites.
b. social networking profiles are relevant to the representation of an employee and job.
New York Times August 2009: “According to a new study conducted by Harris Interactive for CareerBuilder.com, 45 percent of employers... are using social networks to screen job candidates — more than double from a year earlier... The study, which questioned 2,667 managers and human resource workers, found that 35 percent of employers decided not to offer a job to a candidate based on the content uncovered on a social networking site. (The survey has no margin of sampling error because it was not drawn from a representative nationwide sample but rather from volunteer participants.) The report showed that Facebook was the most popular online destination for employers to do their online sleuthing, followed by LinkedIn and MySpace. In addition, 7 percent followed job candidates on Twitter. More than half of the employers who participated in the survey said that provocative photos were the biggest factor contributing to a decision not to hire a potential employee, while 44 percent of employers pinpointed references to drinking and drug use as red flags. Other warning signs included bad-mouthing of previous employers and colleagues and poor online communication skills.”
With employers checking in on future employees it only emphasizes further the fact that we as a society need to acknowledge what is acceptable and what is not lest we face unwanted consequences.
In a way the childhood quote “If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all,” must be applied to the situation. In no way are we harming our freedom of speech, it's just a common everyday courtesy that seems to get lost with many other childhood lessons.
Anyways, cheers to you guys!
hmm, maybe this is why i'm still unemployed... just kidding!
ReplyDeletereading your blog is always a treat. you're a great lady and have aced the entire functional writing thing. i miss all of my journalism and debate days. you're going to be doing such big things soon. when you become an even more important lady in the world, don't forget all of my nice [and sometimes scandalous] comments and blog posts!
That's very true! My mom always tells me to be careful with what I put on the Internet, because it can always come back to you in the future. I don't think I've done anything scandalous though, so I'm pretty sure I'm okay... hopefully, haha!
ReplyDeleteNice job Lizzi. I like where you went with this. Good job.
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