College life and career life don’t mix
Facebook - To a marketer: a dream come true. To a company: a hidden opportunity. To a millennial: the cause of constant conflict. <P>
My co-worker and I were talking today about how we are living a double life in Corporate America. There is the life we were living in college and the life we are living now. And for some reason, those two lives don’t mix well. <P>
I hate having to compartmentalize my life. It sucks. Because here’s the scenario… The company we are working for (Principal) has never had this program before. It’s their Leadership Development Rotation. (Couldn’t they have come up with a shorter name?) <P>
Principal selected four students to go through this three year, fast track program. Because this is a brand new program, it puts us as the face of our generation which has left many people with high expectations for us… <P>
This morning I got my first official Facebook friend request from a co-worker. She’s very talented and well established for her age. In one of my rotations, I’ll be working in her department. I haven’t updated my Facebook profile in a while… and I know I have a handful of pictures that are “not good for my corporate image”… (Many of those stem from working as a bartender in college…) <P>
This is a situation that many Millennials are experiencing. How do you bridge that gap between your college life and your career life? Another example - when I’m doing recruiting visits in the fall and I tell students to check out our Facebook page, do I have a “Principal Profile” and a “Personal Profile”? Do I de-tag myself from all those party pictures? Or do I just say, “Like it or not, this is me.” <P>
I love the last answer… But I don’t think it’s possible to do (yet) in Corporate America. It would just reinforce the negative stereotypes that our generation is known for. I’m not sure what the right thing to do is… But right now, I’m going to keep de-tagging photos while I sit here and debate whether or not I want to add co-workers as friends. Any suggestions?
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8 Responses
I've detailed the step-by-step process I used to launch this business in this free report.
Check it out:
Save the pictures you are untagging yourself in just in case you want to reminiscence someday.
I always thought the facebook thing was a bit odd too. Those who didn’t start using facebook in the .edu era see it as a professional networking site - while many of us “Millennials” used it strictly for keeping in touch with friends. I finally just changed my privacy settings and selected a narrow group of friends who are allowed to see more personal information. Still, I think this is one that we’re all still figuring out.
Allie - Do you remember being on campus and waiting for your school to get approved on the site? The semester our school went live on facebook, I’m almost positive some of my friends’ GPAs dropped. I think I’m going to have to follow what you do and change those privacy settings…
Haha - we actually had a site called AllMSU.com on our campus at Michigan State (which was fairly similar to facebook), so we all just made the switch in 2004. I was on a sports team in college, and we weren’t allowed to have ANY photos of ourselves on the site, which made things interesting.
Hi Andy!
Great to see you blogging again! From my perspective as a career coach, there is no doubt that compromising pictures can damage your reputation and career - now or in the future.
Unless you want to gamble or hope that “down the line, it won’t matter,” de-tag, set privacy and generally recognize that you don’t need to bridge the personal and the professional all of the time.
Miriam Salpeter
Keppie Careers
I have to say that facebook and myspace are two things I’ll never have to worry about. As the wildest picture any one is likely to get of me is when I am leaning on a cow at the fair with a coffee or water in my hand talking to my buddies waiting for my class. And since my “company” is owned by my parents and they know everything anyways I dont think I have much to fear. Though the people I did my internship with are my friends on myspace. Actually…now that I think about it, my boss Mike was WAY wilder than me. And he willingly tells everybody about it! And takes the employees that are of age and want to go along with him!
@Miriam - It’s great to hear from you again! It feels good to be writing again as well.
I’m taking your advice on this one and turning up the privacy settings… It sucks, because it kind of goes against what I believe in as far as “being an open book.” But I think it’s best to do in this scenario… Thanks again for the comment. I’ll be shooting you an email soon to catch up.
Catch 22 Andy - I hope you are not “That Guy” that has a bunch of party pics on your page anyway…but, for arguments sake, we all need to check ourselves and make sure we keep the questionable pictures to ourselves, as you described. I am not sure if our culture will ever fully accept what Millennials have taken for granted for so long, so just be safe.