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The effect of social media use on job candidates

Brian Leiter

So our earlier poll got over 500 responses, and overall, I would say the news is not good for job seekers on social media, such as blogs, twitter, Instagram etc:

Faculty involved in hiring: has the social media presence (blogs, twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc.) of a job candidate affected that candidates prospects at your institution?
Yes, usually in a negative way.
   14%72
Yes, usually in a positive way.
   4%21
Yes, sometimes positive, sometimes negative
   17%91
Rarely, but usually in a negative way.
   16%83
Rarely, but usually in a positive way.
   6%32
No, never in my experience.
   44%234
 

More than half the respondents–56%, or about 300–report that the social media presence of job candidates has affected their job prospects.  And more than half of those reported the effect was usually negative, with another third saying "sometimes positive, sometimes negative."

On the positive side, a bit more than half reported that social media use either had no impact or a positive one.

It might be interesting if faculty who responded to the poll could say a bit about the kinds of things they have seen on social media that have helped and/or hurt candidates.

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5 responses to “The effect of social media use on job candidates”

  1. David Chalmers

    i've appointed at least one postdoc primarily on the basis of excellent blogging. admittedly that was an exceptional case, but there are many others whose substantive philosophical blogging and other online discussion has contributed toward a generally favorable impression. my sense is that substantive philosophical discussion online is helpful much more often than it's harmful. other sorts of online discussion are usually less relevant and may yield more mixed results.

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  2. Greg

    We recently went through a hiring process for adjunct faculty. Every single candidate was vetted through their social media accounts. One in particular had openly complained about his current employment situation at another local school. Needless to say, he wasn't hired. Sour grapes does not set a good tone for a new employee when the job market is filled with people who are happy to work.

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  3. Michael B

    So, we will pay you to publicly criticise science, religion, politics, law, economics, ethics, culture or anything else – and any of those who labour under the areas… but don't dare criticise publicly your employer or you can forget about a job here, thankyou very much!

    So this is the legacy of Socrates' martyrdom for criticising his fellow Athenians publicly. Wow. And I though there were no taboos for the fearless, open-minded paragons of rationality.

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  4. Derek Bowman

    I hope Greg's department is as committed to supporting the advancement of their adjunct faculty as they are to vetting their social media accounts.

    Reply
  5. Big D

    I don't quite understand Greg's reasoning. If an applicant is already working somewhere else, why even bother hiring them? If they were happy to work at their current job, surely they would not be trying to leave it! The market is filled with people who are not working, and thus are more likely to be happy to have a job than those who are already working at a job we now have good reason to believe they do not like as much as they should.

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