Show your digital skin

It’s a bleak time for those leaving IU in May. Many are graduating; others have been sternly asked to leave. Either way, job prospects are low for those of us without instant paths into large corporations.

I’ll be spending the summer with many of my fellow graduates in large cities, perpetuating the stereotype of working in restaurants until something worthwhile opens up. And it should be noted there is nothing necessarily wrong with feeding America as a means; it’s just not something I wish to do for the rest of my life given that I majored in making talkey-pictures.

One of the more popular job-securing strategies is scrutinizing one’s social networks. Out of fear that a potential employer might search their Facebook profiles, I’ve seen many take the digital shears to their public info, cutting down their profiles to the equivalent of a naked shrub of facts.

I’ve written about this in the past, warning girls that miming the performance of oral sex on a friend is probably not a good profile pic for one’s to-be-boss to see. Now I ask you to go the other way. Not sexually, but with your social networking habits.

Hiding everything like a turtle retreating into his shell is the wrong way to go about this. Even the most ancient companies now know the phrase “Web 2.0.” They might not know what to do with that, but they want it, and their future hires should know what it means.

Go ahead and put yourself out there in the public domain. If I were choosing between two new employees, I’d rather take the guy who I can see has crappy taste in movies than the one who has nothing but a generic e-mail and no results when Googled.

Questions are going to race around my head for the latter: Could they be a serial killer, unable to list any interests that don’t include “cutting people’s skin and wearing that skin like a suit”? Do they fear the oncoming war with robots (and will that make asking them to use the copier a problem)?

If you’re doubting the need to demonstrate “the internet skillz” (also probably the name of an underground dance crew), know this: Recently, Kenmore has been messaging me on Facebook. Washers and dryers that have no need to be online are asking me questions and commenting on status updates.

Don’t be afraid to show a little digital skin; just make it less embarrassing cleavage skin and more impressive muscle skin. Show potential employers your Internet prowess. You might just end up getting an interview because you and your interviewer are both a “fan” of Justin Bieber.


E-mail: cquandt@indiana.edu