Social Media as a Judge!
By
Austin Archibong
Austin is a final year student of chemical engineering at the University of Ilorin
This is an off shoot of the last paragraph of Sola’s excellent piece on Email applications: Why graduates goof (iii). He mentioned where people to be employed by the World Bank were requested to tweet at their official handle. I thought it as a fresh initiative.
A friend, on the same day I read the article, told me something I found rather startling. A company in Lagos had invited the person recounting the story to me to come for an interview for the post of ‘marketing executives.’ I was advised that it was a start-up. A test had earlier been conducted for hundreds interested in the openings. All the successful candidates shortlisted were interviewed in batches. After the interview, they were called into one board room for the final cut. Worthy of note was that they were all graduates, all with second class upper honours (2’1) in various disciplines. “Pure water 2’1,” as my friend describes the class of honours. I used to think second class lower, all down was described with that word. A huge fraction of graduates, usually more than half, in most schools finish with second class lower honours, as evident in most publications. So no disrespect to anybody.
The panel inquired how ‘connected’ and frequently online the applicants were, most answered to the affirmative. He asked them to bring out their phones, most being smart phones. He inquired how many had facebook, twitter, linkedin and google plus accounts etc. Those who did not have at least four active were asked to leave. Subsequently, he started scrutinizing their recent posts, followers and recent activities (with their approval of course). That informed his decision and he made his final pick. They were not told earlier that social media would be used. For some other posts in different companies, same social media was used for further scrutiny.
This is not a made-up story. It really did happen. The moral of the story is just how dynamic hiring managers’ for different positions have now become. It goes on to preach that social media should not be underscored in job search. I would not want to do a rehash of Sola’s brilliant write-up, but truly discretion should be applied when posting on one’s personal account, particularly official ones, with all your data there!
The social media is now used as a Judge! It has come to stay. Please be ready.
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Nice nice nice. Thanks a lot Austin for this piece