Impact of Social Networking on Career Progression - Assignment Example

Impact of Social Networking on Career Progression Introduction The current recession and downturn in the market has changed our lives in multiple ways. Spending, unemployment, job cuts, inflation, and others are the most common areas that have changed. However, this recession has also indicated the severe needs for employees to improve their abilities and manage their career with pursuit of excellence. Since this is the world of technology, internet, computers, and instant solutions therefore, many individuals are seeking ways of career progression with the help of internet. Specifically, not the internet but online social networking sites that people are looking towards, for help and advice. Official numbers and reports indicate the same. Let us consider the example of LinkedIn. Launched in May 2003, it is a business orientated social networking site (Goetchius, pp. 23-25, 2007). For the past couple of years, when recession was on its peak, LinkedIn’s growth in terms of number of members increased by almost 200% (Greenhaus, Callanan & Godshalk, pp. 52-55, 2009). According to the reports for the first quarter of 2010, it has more than 65 million members. However, it is even more interesting to note that most of the newcomers to LinkedIn are former employees in the badly hit financial sector. Quite understandably, these people are looking towards social networking with all the hope and wish that this online social networking will help them with their career progression. Therefore, it would be interesting to explore that how actually can online social networking help employers to boost their career prospects. The rest of this paper is an attempt to look at the same. Discussion In order to simply and facilitate the discussion, it would be helpful to divide the discussion into two distinctive parts. It appears that “Online Social Networking” is a product of two major elements. The first one being “online” and the second one is “social networking”. This paper would study the impact of both separately and towards the end would present the picture as a whole. The former part has taken the first place in the discussion. Without any doubts, social networking is not an integral part or pre-requisite for career progression but for any thing in life. “Man is a social animal and with food clothing and shelter, relationships, social bonding, and contacts are amongst his major needs” (Hunt, pp. 5-6, 2009). Realizing the importance of social networking, parents try to teach the same to their children in their very early ages. In fact, the educational system these days is trying its best to boost social networking amongst students because this single factor can help people in their future lives (Hansen, pp. 3, 2000). The most important aspect of social networking has direct relation with diversity. Consciously or unconsciously, social networking leads a person towards embracing and celebrating diversity (Doyle, pp. 19-20, 2008). Having contacts with people from different backgrounds, people speaking different languages, people from different countries, races, customs, cultures, demographics, casts creed, colours, perceptions and others enables a person to broaden his horizon (Goetchius, pp. 23-25, 2007). Moreover, today in 21st century embracing diversity has become increasingly important. Gone are the days when workplaces were segregated and membership within them were controlled. Today, extensive legislation, increased awareness, individual empowerment, and technological sophistication have changed the scenario completely (Darling, pp. 63-66, 2003). Almost every country has now laws that prohibit workplace discrimination in any forms. In fact, many firms now have the pressure to prove the membership of minority within their organizations. This eventually means that the majority of the people working would have to deal with people coming from diverse backgrounds as their colleagues, employees, and bosses. The challenge is for people who are or want to take the leadership or managerial positions. “A colleague may get away by ignoring or misunderstanding any other colleague but quite understandably, the same is not true for leaders” (Sautter & Crompton, pp. 52-56, 2008). Managers are expected to understand the needs and expectations of their employees or sub-ordinates at all times. Moreover, in today’s world there is no excuse for failure at the same. At this stage, a person with extensive social networking has a higher possibility to understand the needs and customs of people from diverse backgrounds since he may have some experience in this regard. However, a manager who scores less on social networking may fail to understand the needs of his employees. Even more important is the fact that diversity results in broadening of horizon and sharpening of horizon. Social networking with a number of people leads to informal but curial exchange of information, ideas, thoughts, perceptions, viewpoints, formulas, beliefs, and attitudes. Quite understandably, experts believe, “more ideas and thoughts mean better decisions and better decisions obviously mean career progression” (Darling, pp. 63-66, 2003). This explains why many companies, employers, professionals and businesspersons constantly update their profile pages on these websites, bombard their pages with several blogs, posts and topics, keep a track of opinions and reply them constantly (Hansen, pp. 3, 2000). In fact, many of them have now started hiring professionals for managing these pages. Posts, discussions, replies, comments, debates, and chats on these online networking sites have provided many people with useful and big ideas and market insights, which are otherwise very expensive to get (Greenhaus, Callanan & Godshalk, pp. 52-55, 2009). Social Networking is also important because of the fact that is an integral part of an individual’s grooming. This is fact that people who are good with others are the most successful ones in terms of career (Hansen, pp. 3, 2000). In fact, getting along well with people, impressing others, and assimilating into the crowd in no time is an art and only a few people can master this art (Greenhaus, Callanan & Godshalk, pp. 52-55, 2009). Since practice makes a man perfect, therefore social networking can help one master this art. Moreover, sociable people tend to rank high on maturity and understandability and quite understandably, these factors help a lot in career progression (Sautter & Crompton, pp. 52-56, 2008). Until this point, the essay had tried to prove that social networking has an important effect on career progression. Now we will discuss that “online” social networking has even a greater impact of career progression. There are various obvious benefits of using the online option for social networking. Firstly, it is free of cost and when we use the word cost it is not with respect to money but also with respect to time, energy, and effort (Doyle, pp. 19-20, 2008). Attending seminars, lecturers, business parties, get togethers, dinners, lunches, presentations, sessions and others is always a hectic, expensive and tough job specially when being done just for increasing your contacts. Instead, sitting at your own place and doing all that on your terms with just a click of a button is much easier (Levitt & Harwood, pp. 14-15, 2009). The fact of cost effectiveness has attracted many individuals towards online social networking. Moreover, in this today’s world of immense competitiveness one who saves time and money or uses cost effective ways usually takes the lead. Secondly, online social networking means that it is going to be much simpler than compared to anything else. There are so many social networking websites targeting specific niche marketing. For example, “Wakoopa.com” targets computer lovers, “Taltopia.com” is a place for artists, “SocialVibe.com” is a charity based website, “ReverbNation.com” and “Quarterlife.com” are two websites targeting musicians, bands and filmmakers, “Muxlim.com” is a site for Muslims, “Mychurch.com” for Christian Churches, “Meettheboss.com” for the business and finance community. Moreover, Russian community uses “livejournal.com”, people who love books can be found on “librarything.com”, talent in India is explored through “Ibibo.com”, “Faces.com” is popular amongst the British teenagers, “CafeMom.com”, “BabyCenter.com” specifically targets mothers, and there are many others sites that have specific target markets. That makes life easier when it comes to selecting “your type of people” (Hunt, pp. 5-6, 2009). Thirdly, feedback and follow up becomes easy. If you want to stay in touch and contact with someone for life then all you want to do is to add them in your friends list and you will never lose them. In fact, you can contact them at any time, 24 hours a day and 365 days an year (Levitt & Harwood, pp. 14-15, 2009). Besides, the number of contacts than you can have with doing it online are many times higher than the traditional networking ways. Another important point to note is that now more and more companies are realizing the cost effective and efficient nature of online social networking and are becoming a part of it. Many small and medium-sized businesses have their profiles or pages on some of relevant sites. Therefore, online job posting, recruitment and job searching has become very common (Hunt, pp. 5-6, 2009). Many experts have repeatedly said that as we move further and further towards the age of technology, this trend will continue to increase. Therefore, someone actively using the internet has a higher probability of knowing about new jobs and openings (Greenhaus, Callanan & Godshalk, pp. 52-55, 2009). References Darling, Diane. (2003). The networking survival guide: get the success you want by tapping into the people you know. McGraw-Hill Professional. Doyle, Alison. (2008). Internet Your Way to a New Job. Happy About. Goetchius, Alex. (2007). Career Building through Social Networking. The Rosen Publishing Group. Greenhaus, Jeffrey H., Callanan, Gerard A., & Godshalk, Veronica M. (2009). Career Management. SAGE. Hansen, Katharine. (2000). A foot in the door: networking your way into the hidden job market. Ten Speed Press. Hunt, Tara. (2009). The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business. Crown Business. Levitt, Julie Griffin., & Harwood, Lauri. (2009). Your Career: How to Make It Happen. Cengage Learning. Otazo, Karen L. (2006). The truth about managing your career. Prentice Hall PTR. Sautter, Ellen, & Crompton, Diane. (2008). Seven Days to Online Networking: Make Connections to Advance Your Career and Business Quickly. JIST Works. Read More