1

Matilda Alvarado Thofelt

International IT College of Sweden
Text communication C
Research report

Research Report
Online Social Networking

Research report – Online Social Networking, 12/12 – 2009, Stockholm

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Matilda Alvarado Thofelt
International IT College of Sweden
Text communication C
Research report

Content

• Front page p. 1
• Content p.2
• Introduction p. 3
• Social Networking p. 3
• Online social networking; Just for fun? p. 4
• Will online social networkin get you a job? p. 4-5
• Positive online content p. 6
• Discrimination online p. 6
• Summary p. 6-7

Online Social Networking

Introduction

Research report – Online Social Networking, 12/12 – 2009, Stockholm

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Matilda Alvarado Thofelt
International IT College of Sweden
Text communication C
Research report
There are thousands and thousands of employment sites out there,
websites that all have one thing in common, the promise you a job. But
how efficient is really social networking when it comes to work? A source1
at Yahoo.com say social networking is good for entertainment purposes
only and aren’t appropriate for employment, but if all these websites says
it is, who is right?

***

Social networking
To understand the phenomena of online social networking, we have to
look closer at social networking as a whole.
2
Imagine that this spider web is a social network; the dot that is marked in
yellow is the most central person in it. That person knows more people,
have more ties to people, than anyone else in the network. He/she is as
connected as can be.

This whole structure is made of

individuals, or organizations, also
called “nodes”. Every node is
tied to another. How they are
tied to each other differ from
network to network. Most
common is that the networks are
divided in to family networks,
friendship, beliefs or business.
You can have a different amount
of social capital depending on
how many ties you have. A node
with very few ties has a low
social capital, a node with 500 or
more ties have a very rich social
capital. The more ties the higher
capital.

***
1 By Peter D. Weddle, under “networking tips”, hotjobs.yahoo.com
http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/networking/Will_Social_Networking_Get_You_a_Job__200
60911-082016.html?subtopic=Networking+Tips

2 Social Networking, Wikipedia.com, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network

Research report – Online Social Networking, 12/12 – 2009, Stockholm

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Matilda Alvarado Thofelt
International IT College of Sweden
Text communication C
Research report

Online Social Networking; Just for fun?

It seems to me as if all the top sites, facebook, myspace, flickr and so on

are for social use only. Nothing about them says I’m a professional. It’s
mostly vacation pictures and pictures of friends. Irrelevant information
when applying for a job. Those sites are much more for social purposes, as
yahoo says; I know from personal experience that I only use that kind of
sites to keep in contact with friends and family
that live outside f Stockholm or others that I
don’t see as often.
However, one site is among the most used
ones and is for one purpose only, finding a job.
Monster. Com.
To your left is the statistics3 for how many that
gets new jobs via monster.com every month. The figures look good from
here, but since there is no statistics over how many people that are
currently using the site, there is no way to compare. Although, since
monster.com is used all over the world and have different domain names
in every country (e.g. monster.fr –France, monster.se –Sweden) it is hard
to establish exactly how many are active users. Thus, the sites official
ranking among other sites is currently4 508 and 141 in USA, I guess we
could presume that the users are plenty.
Personally I doubt monster.com efficiency. Most of the job offers on the
sites were links to smaller sites. This results in more people applying for
the same job on small sites. This means that more people apply and your
own chances of landing the job decrees.

***

Will online social networking get you a job?

Social networking has been proved many times over to be the best way to
get a job, however, is online social networking equally efficient?
When you are looking for friends, online social networking is efficient.

In a survey that I did on friends and randomly picked people between 16

3Monster.com, http://about-monster.com/employment/index/17

4Alexa.com, http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/monster.com

Research report – Online Social Networking, 12/12 – 2009, Stockholm

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Matilda Alvarado Thofelt
International IT College of Sweden
Text communication C
Research report

and 60 years old, almost 25%

had a friend or
boyfriend/girlfriend that the
met online.

Finding a job by online social

networking proved to be not as
easy. Mostly because, as I
mentioned earlier, most of the
sites are for social purposes
only. Unless you visit a site like
monster.com, you won’t find
many sites for job searching. At least not in comparison to all the social
networking sites.
The difference between “social” sites and job searching sites are there
purposes, 5they have different purposes that are performed in different
ways and takes place on different websites.

“They may be a ton of fun, but it’s unlikely to get you hired”

These are the words of Peter D. Weddle, author of the report I refer to
above. He means that since the purposes are so different, the chance of
getting a job through online social networking are minimal. I believe
pictures play a big role in this dilemma. For example, on facebook.com
you are able to upload pictures and “tag” people on them. This so that
everyone can see who did what when. Most of the pictures are from
different events, trips you’ve made together ect. I personally would not
like to hire someone that I’ve seen pictures of bingeing at a party two
weeks ago. This lowers your credibility when applying for a job, Your
employers can dicide not to hire you over just one picture and then hire
someone else, not necessarly better than you but with more credibility.
Also, your employer don't need to log on to an account to see your
pictures on different social sites, they could just google your name and see
what comes up. Göran Nilsson who works as an employer for bigger
companies says this;

5 By Peter D. Weddle, under “networking tips”, hotjobs.yahho.com,

http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/networking/Will_Social_Networking_Get_You_a_Job__200
60911-082016.html?subtopic=Networking+Tips

Research report – Online Social Networking, 12/12 – 2009, Stockholm

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Matilda Alvarado Thofelt
International IT College of Sweden
Text communication C
Research report

"Some of the companies who hire me do ask me to check up on possible

candidates online. Surprisingly, googleing someone can tell you quite a lot
about a person, but to be honest, in most cases, nothing relevant, or
nothing at all, pops up."

So how much does really your online social networking pages effect you?
According to Mr. Nilsson, nothing at all.

***

Positive online content

Online content isn't always negative, if you work with media, graphic
design, web design, photagrafy or alike, content of your work online can
be very helpful. Almost every photografer has a web page now a days.
Mostly for their clients sake.

"My web page really helps me reach out to all kinds of clients"

Says Andreas Holmström6 owner of AndreasHolmström.com. However, if

you are a receptionist, doctor or maybe work in a film theatre, a web site
wouldn't help muck since it's looked upon as irrelevant.

***

Discrimination online
Another risk when online social networking is the risk of discrimination.
When you e-mail your resume, no one can judge you by your looks, ethnic
background, way of dressing yourself ect. Also, your employer might deny
you an interview because of pictures or information about you online.
However, if your employer is a person that judge people by their looks and
not by your skills, you aren’t very likely to get the job anyway, unless you
really make a mark at the interview. This is of course is wrong and
shouldn’t be tolerated but unfortunately this is the situation at many work
places today.

6 Andreas Holmström - http://www.andreasholmstrom.com/

Research report – Online Social Networking, 12/12 – 2009, Stockholm

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Matilda Alvarado Thofelt
International IT College of Sweden
Text communication C
Research report

***

Summary
Online social networking, as most matters, can be both good or bad
depending in what context and for what purpose it is used. I believe that
social networking works better when searching for clients, e.g. companies
offering services such as a web designer offering design.

He or she can then show his or her portfolio online and get hired that way,
however, if you are not your own company and if you are not offering
services. Online social networking is not relevant in your job searching.
This could even possibly do more harm than good when applying for a job,
although, that risk is quite small as long as you don't have too much
personal content online.

Research report – Online Social Networking, 12/12 – 2009, Stockholm