Social_Networking

As I searched my name on the popular search engine : Google, I continued browsing the links that they had provided for my search. I have found that there are many people by the name of Anu Joseph, however I have found none of the searches include myself, which can be understood by the fact that I do not have any social networking profiles. Therefore, I would like to use my son as an example, as he has many of these social networking profiles. As I searched my son's name in the place of mine, I am greeted by Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace profiles. I continued on by browsing his networking pages, only to find out that he has many privacy settings which state that only his friends, and those that he approves of can only view his page. Which led me to think that he had made the right decision, as many of these networking sites allow access to people's personal information such as their full names, addresses, what schools they go to, and even where they work. Many of which I personally find to be unsafe. If I were a complete stranger, or an employer attempting to judge my son by glancing at his profile, I would not be able to either make much of an assessment, as well as judge him as being fit for the job, or not fit. Simply because of the many privacy settings he has set. All one would be greeted with would be his current address, his current schooling, and his name. Therefore, I believe the hiring process can go both ways. I could go with the decision not to hire him, due to the fact that his profiles do not provide much information. Otherwise, I could have an interview done with him, in order to truly know him rather than make assumptions based off of his "internet life". I believe employers should not make false judgments, or pre-judgments based off of internet social networking processes and should rather do it the old fashion way by calling the subject in and actually interviewing him, because in my opinion, one should be aware of what they place on the internet for people to see, however what they put on there was meant to be shared amongst their friends and not meant for strangers. In conclusion, I would like to bring up the classic phrase of "not to judge a book by its cover", as I believe it is in the right context in this situation. I believe every person has the right to live as they want, however be aware as to how they express themselves in the public. In other words, one deserves a second chance, especially if it is concerning a potential job opportunity. On another side note, I believe that these social networking sites were meant to connect people to each other, by similar tastes, and not built for the purpose of helping employers. However I do believe the correlation of browsing these profiles, helps indeed in the work force, in order to not waste time in hiring those who were not fit for the job.