Forget the awkwardness involved when your mom or younger sister friends you on MySpace.com — now what happens when your annoying coworker or even your boss "pokes" you on Facebook.com?
For many students who have held internships or are just making their way into the workplace, social networking online with colleagues can cause sticky situations. What Web sites are best to keep professional contact, what constitutes professional online etiquette and how much personal information is smart to post?
Two of the most popular networking sites on the Internet, Facebook and LinkedIn.com, have many overlapping functions but invite different levels of contact. While Facebook allows users to post videos from Saturday's party and invite friends to events, LinkedIn targets older, professional users interested in staying in touch and networking.
But should Facebook be used to foster and maintain professional contacts and can LinkedIn be used to make "friends" with potential employers? These are the questions that many seniors have had to contend with as they have gone through the arduous job search process.
Many people keep the functions of Facebook and LinkedIn separate, believing LinkedIn is mainly for professional networking and Facebook is strictly for personal networking. Therefore, many students have profiles on both sites.
While open to Facebook-friending professional contacts, senior Julie Gomstyn, a peer advisor in the Career Services office who has developed a specialty in social media, feels that Facebook functions should be kept separate from LinkedIn ones.
"I have Facebook-friended some people I used to work with, but it hasn't helped much in terms of professional identity. I like to keep my Facebook privacy settings; I see it as more of a social and personal resource than professional networking," Gomstyn said. "It might be useful to Facebook-friend your boss because it might remind you of their birthday or something like that, but it doesn't contribute to the [professional] online niche the way that LinkedIn can."
Senior Amanda McDavid feels that using Facebook for professional networking could be detrimental.
"On LinkedIn, in order to friend somebody you have to say how you know them or put in their e-mail. Facebook friends I've sometimes only met once or twice, and I wouldn't feel comfortable with that on LinkedIn," she said.
She does feel, however, that LinkedIn is a useful alternative to Facebook for keeping in touch with professional contacts. "LinkedIn is a good place to connect to older people you've worked with in internships, because it's awkward to be Facebook friends with those people, and a lot of older people still aren't on Facebook," she said.
Gomstyn also feels that LinkedIn is a good way of maintaining contact with old colleagues.
"LinkedIn is an interesting way of getting back in touch with people you've worked with and seeing what they've been up to. It's interesting to see where they're working now," she said.
McDavid agrees that the two Web sites have separate uses. "LinkedIn is definitely just professional while Facebook is kind of a mixture of both, but I think Facebook could be tough because your client could see embarrassing pictures of you that you don't realize are posted right away, or somebody might write on your wall about some drunken adventure," she said. "Do you really want your boss to see that?"
Gomstyn sang the praises of LinkedIn for advertising one's professional potential. "Having a LinkedIn profile is kind of guaranteeing excellent Google search results [when someone searches your name] because LinkedIn comes up high on your public search profile," she said. "Employers searching your name click on it and it makes you look good because it's about all your job experience. It's like a resume, cover letter and reference sheet in one."
