I Don't Want to Show ME Off

This week's reading was about professional networking. I read a few articles that talk about networking, professionally, via online means. See, it's one thing for me to hand out a copy of my resume to prospective employers, or to e-mail a copy to someone with whom I'm trying to network. Posting it for everyone to see is entirely different. While it's less effort for me because I don't have to send my resume to individual people, it's also much more revealing of myself. It's trading laziness for security.

I'm very stingy with my facebook profile, for it does not reveal my address, phone number, or other personal information at any time. Even the little amount it does reveal, I am able to control who sees. The header of my resume contains my phone number and address. If I'm so stingy with my facebook profile, what are the chances that I'll be in a hurry to post my resume? Very small.

Do I want people to be able to google me? Realistically, no. It would be a little too invasive of my privacy. It's nice to be able to have an online persona that is recognizable and easily findable, but at what price? In my opinion, the price is too high. As a humungous fan of face-to-face interaction, I would rather use other peoples' online information to track them down, to have a face-to-face conversation with them. I have no problem connecting and interacting with people online, it's actually the people that I don't want to interact with, who I'll ultimately end up interacting with because they've tracked me down, that keep me from publishing a back-door to my life on the internet (sometimes literally).

Everything I see says that networking is the most important thing that you can do. I think that becoming the most dedicated, educated, and hard-working person will be enough to set you apart from everyone else. Having a niche that makes you so special will have employers either seeking you, or refusing to turn down employment to you. I plan to have a very specialized career track where I know exactly where I fit, and where there will always be room.

Stalker

First, let me be very candid in saying, "There are a lot of sick people out there."

Now, if a long lost friend of mine wants to find me, they're more than welcome to search for me on facebook, and send me a message to see if it's me. They wouldn't be able to see any of the very little information in my profile unless I accept their friend request. And that, is not guaranteed to happen.

If a stalker wanted to find out more information about me, they could also search for me on facebook. What would they get? A picture of my head that's about 10 pixels wide. That's about it. I'm very restrictive with the information that I put up online, because I never know who's looking at it. Even with Google Analytics which lets me see where the people that view my blog are from, doesn't tell me who, exactly, they are. Anyone could be snooping... even a prospective employer.

In this way I feel that I have a good balance. People who know me can find me and contact me before finding out more info. People I don't know, don't get any info, but still have the opportunity to message me if they feel so inclined. As I build my life online, including website with that catacomb my work over the years, both professional and collegiate, I want to be able to control who sees and uses it. I feel that someone checking me out online, is practically the same thing as if they were looking through my window at me. It's just as creepy when you find out someone's there, because you don't know what they've seen, or how they've interpreted what they have seen. The online world is a fun and magnificent place, but it can get very scary, very fast when "a motivated person," as Lenhart and Madden describe, hunts you down. These two authors tell us that 63% of teens with online profiles think they could be found. Imagine how many are in denial... imagine how many actually can be found. It's a daunting thought.

http://www.pewinternet.org/report_display.asp?r=211 - "Teens, Privacy and Online Social Networks: How teens manage their online identities and personal information in the age of MySpace."