Collegians using social networking sites to land jobs

A 26-year-old college student opened a Twitter account to get a job after learning management of social networking services via an e-commerce course. He raised the number of followings and repeated retweets, and he uploaded a neat photo of him in a suit on his profile page.

Due to these efforts, a popular social commerce company contacted him and asked for his resume. He thought he would never have gotten such an opportunity without taking the course because he graduated from a provincial university and scored just 520 points on the Test of English for International Communication, also known as TOEIC.

Most job seekers are putting more efforts into managing their accounts on social networking sites. This is because more companies are utilizing such sites for recruitment. Many workers also open separate Twitter or Facebook accounts that their bosses can access. This is like leading a double life by making “fake” friends on the two sites.

○ Double life via second account

A student majoring in business administration at a university in Seoul has two Twitter accounts. On his personal account, he makes jokes, uses vulgar language, and posts messages about his personal life. He also retweets messages on politicians he supports. He rarely puts up his own messages on his official account, however, saying, “Posting too instructive messages won`t work. So I follow economists or sport stars and retweet some of their posts that I think are useful.”

A civil servant at a central government agency uses Twitter and Facebook for different purposes. On Twitter, he follows his favorite politicians and speaks ill of his superior. On Facebook, however, he posts no personal thoughts as his Facebook friends, who made public their jobs, contact information and academic backgrounds, are mostly superiors and colleagues. For him, Facebook has turned into “Fakebook.” “I`ve heard news about a Briton who was fired by his company after speaking ill of his boss (on Facebook),” he said, adding, “As a civil servant, I have to behave carefully.”

○ Deleting unfavorable past

Those who have applied for jobs are deleting unfavorable messages on social networking sites they posted in their past, such as those containing foul language. Netizens call such messages “black history.”

A 27-year-old student who is preparing to enter a finance company in the latter half of this year after giving up taking the bar said, “I don’t want to give the impression that I`ve wasted time. So I`ve deleted all the messages I put up while preparing for the bar and living like a straggler.”

A soon-to-be college graduate also said, “I`ve googled my email and SNS accounts and deleted messages that can be considered anti-government or antisocial.”

More companies are switching from Internet homepages to social networking sites to offer recruiting information and communicate with job applicants. Over this process, companies can also find out about the social networking site accounts and social networks of applicants.

Jeong Jae-hun, a manager at the job placement agency Incruit, said, “Due to the growing perception that specifications on resumes are ineffective in sorting out appropriate candidates, recruiting managers are surfing social networking sites to see with whom applicants hang around and what fields they`re interested in.”

○ Promote via social media

Another college student left a trace of exchanging English messages with his foreign friends when he studied abroad to show job interviewers his fluency in English. He left the trace on QR code that was attached to a job application document so that interviewers could see it. His QR code is linked to his social networking site accounts that he managed for employment.

Choi Jae-yong, head of the Korea Social Media Agency, said, “Companies tend to prefer those who manage SNS well regardless of field,” adding, “Many students believe that making the most of SNS is an effective strategy to land jobs."

baltika7@donga.com