Mashiki Amiketo wrote on Nov 16, 2011, 13:18:
Beamer wrote on Nov 16, 2011, 13:06:
You don't sit around going "I'm so special, I don't have an account" without realizing it kind of makes you look a bit insane and, these days, potential employers consider it a bad thing.
Any company that hires or thinks that having a FB account is a requirement can piss off. Insane is lighting cats on fire and launching them via a catapult. Smart is not following the groupthink, and throwing your privacy to the wind.
Why?
For one, having a Facebook account is normal now. It's a sign of a decently adjusted social person. Not having one sends off alarms of Unabomber.
But even then, perhaps the profile is just hard to find, so not a huge deal.
What is a huge deal, though? If you're a recruiter you are vouching for the person you pass along to a hiring manager. Let's say you have two resumes you're trying to decide between. On paper both candidates look identical. So you go to Facebook. You type in the first name and see a normal looking person with some interests common to yours. He seems like a safe choice that would fit into any office. You type in the other name and get nothing. You know zero about this person beyond the piece of paper.
Which candidate do you think the recruiter will be acting on?
It always amazes me that people think recruiters work in some vacuum and can be effective with a single sheet of professional claims and perhaps another sheet of generic cover letter. No one reads the cover letter, and after reading even 10 resumes they all blur together. This is why networking gets you jobs - it allows someone to skip the entire resume blitz and instead go right to someone they already know works for the job. When that fails recruiters now use Google, Facebook and LinkedIn to try to find people that they can feel comfortable recommending.
Which actually brings us to the other good part of Facebook - networking. Know that guy that sat next to you in third grade? You stay in his mind if you like the occasional picture of his drooling kid. Then, when an interesting position comes up in his company you're not swinging by out of nowhere when you ask him to pass your resume. Or remember that level designer you met at GDC? You add him as a friend on Facebook and occasionally get into discussions on a new game he mentions playing. Then, when there's an opening in his company you're kind of a buddy, even loosely, that he's happy to recommend.