CBS MoneyWatch Series on Facebook & Your Career
From time to time I've written about how Facebook can help -- or hinder -- your career. So I wanted to alert you to a series that CBS Moneywatch is running right now on just that subject.
The series, written by "On the Job" columnist Amy Levin-Epstein, includes a post on "How Facebook Can Get You Fired" (including updating your status too often and sharing religious or political views too aggressively). She even writes about how to change your privacy settings so that only you can see those tagged photos of you that your friends are posting. As soon as I saw that, I changed my own privacy settings. (Not that any of my photos are bad -- I just don't know that everyone needs to see, say, that photo of me after running a half marathon last June, you know, the one where my hair is really messy.)
Lest you think your Facebooking days are over, Levin-Epstein also writes about "How Facebook Can Get You Hired" (including revealing a healthy work-life balance and being able to talk Facebook shop at your interview). I liked her tip on putting a "killer" head shot on your profile, too -- as opposed to, I guess, a picture of your kitty or a bottle of your favorite top-shelf brand of tequila.
It looks like there are more posts coming in the series, but while noodling around on the Moneywatch site, I also found a column on Facebook business etiquette (that one's subtitled "Why You Shouldn't Friend Your Boss"). I particularly liked writer Carla Fried's tip here that if you friend your co-workers, you should consider them your primary audience, not your friends. In fact I really like the idea of consciously identifying your Facebook audience, since it can be easy to forget who's actually watching you online.
