By Hilary Hilpert
Social networking sites do not provide users with privacy // Agency Spy
Two Police Officers from Kennewick, Wash. lost their jobs last week after a concerned father reported inappropriate material found on their Facebook profiles.
These Officers represent a mere fraction of professionals who are jobless for the same reason.
With the rave over social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, the line between personal and professional lives is becoming increasingly thin.
Once we are exposed to the world of social media, we cannot expect to have privacy. Through pictures, blogs, videos and comments, professionals around the world are losing jobs—and there is no one to blame but ourselves.
Matthew Winckler, former Officer for the city of Kennewick, was fired after a father found his daughter looking at Winckler’s inappropriate Facebook profile.
“Everybody’s got their right to privacy, but when there’s an intermixing of images of the state patrol and state patrol cars…with less than professional-type comments, it doesn’t present a good image for the state patrol,” said state patrol Capt. Jeff DeVere.
According to Viadeo, a British survey conducted in 2009, 62 percent of employers check online profiles of most applicants and nearly a quarter of them are rejected because of it.
Some believe that if our personal life does not affect our work performance, then firing someone based on their less-than-professional social networking is unjustifiable.
In 2007, Denise Petrella, the former General Manager of an Olive Garden restaurant in Orange City, Fla. was fired for posting pictures of her 18-year-old daughter drinking beer at the Petrella home.
Petrella was fired because her employers were concerned that if she allowed her under-aged daughter to drink alcohol, then Petrella would serve alcohol to under-aged customers at the restaurant.
While situations like Petrella’s raise a great deal of controversy, it represents a serious reminder that our personal lives are not necessarily private.
While personal profiles keep us connected to the world, professionals must reevaluate how connected they wish to be. In an increasingly connected world, one wrong MySpace post could cost you your job.
Edited by Melody Yeung
