
Ask HN: Does lack of a social media presence harm employment chances? - warsharks
With a very large number of companies now vetting the social media accounts of their applicants I was wondering how its seen if someone has no social media presence at all?
======
RickS
Anecdotally, both as a hirer and hiree, I'd say the answer is no, it's not
important. I can't think of a time a social profile has made or broken a hire
on my end, and I've been hired despite having a locked IG, a mostly blank
linkedin, no FB or snapchat, and a twitter that's mostly me griping
unattractively.

Grain of salt, though, I'm in a field where a portfolio is required upfront,
so that replaces a huge amount of signaling that might have to come from other
places.

~~~
sli
It varies pretty wildly. A friend of my mother applied for a job doing
clerical work at the city police station, and one of the conditions of hiring
was surrendering her Facebook password. For some reason I'll never understand
(she didn't _need_ the job, just wanted something to do during the day), she
took the job.

~~~
Razengan
> one of the conditions of hiring was surrendering her Facebook password.

Is that even legal? How? _Why?_

~~~
jachee
Sharing the password to a Facebook account against their TOS anyway.
[https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms](https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms)
Section 4, bullet 8.

------
hollaur
Yes, I definitely think so. I investigated this for my school newspaper, six
or so years ago.

Eighty percent of recruiters/hiring managers google you before inviting you in
for an interview. ([http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-p-joyce/job-search-
tips_...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-p-joyce/job-search-
tips_b_4834361.html))

Read the story about Pete Kistler:
[https://brandyourself.com/info/about](https://brandyourself.com/info/about)

~~~
rlv-dan
This can swing both ways. If you deliberately build a professional social
presence, blogging about coding, LinkedIn resume, and so on, then it's likely
positive, but if you publish drunken photos and post rude twits then it
probably will hurt your job chances.

------
apatters
I'd consider it a bonus (if they dont have a Facebook, they're probably not
wasting much time on it).

There are enough people who use social media but hide their friends list,
posts, tweets, etc. from all non-friends, so if you're concerned you can set
up a profile which you don't use and keep your (non-)activity hidden.

------
horsecaptin
I can speak for tech:

No it doesn't. What got me jobs:

\- Good, to the point cover letter (what job are you applying for? why are you
interested in it? invitation to view your resume and invitation to get on the
phone to explore more).

\- Good resume - tailored for the job (not super customized, just suitable for
the title / responsibilities).

\- Got a place online they can check out previous work? Huge bonus points.
There's still plenty of competition for people who've actually built stuff.
And, talking about an interesting project is far more fun than talking about
past experiences, especially if it is a recent / current project.

\- Social Media: I'd say not having a profile is better than having one.

------
lkrubner
I have a blog and no employer has ever looked at it, even though I list the
blog on my resume.

I walk into interviews and the interviewer often starts off by asking
something basic such as "Do you know what object oriented programming is?"

My best known essay is "Object Oriented Programming Is An Expensive Disaster
Which Must End." The essay was discussed here on Hacker News:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8420060](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8420060)

Anyone who Google's my name will discover this and many other essays. Yet I've
never met an interviewer who knew that I wrote these essays.

When I started the blog I kept it strictly professional and strictly about
technology. But as the years went by, I realized that no employer would ever
look at it, so I started posting political things. At first I worried that
employers would see this and avoid me because of the politics. But no. I
routinely walk into job interviews and the people who talk to me have never
looked online for any information about me.

Seriously, in the last 10 years I've had 6 jobs and 30 freelance clients. None
of them every looked me up before I arrived for the interview.

------
newdaynewuser
I think, in Tech, it doesn't matter because we tend to be more privacy
concise. Some of co-workers have never created any social media and accounts
and nothing shows up for them when you search for them.

But in other fields it might be different story. My wife is a recruiter for a
large hospital. She has told me that while this is not official but usually if
an applicant doesn't have social media profile, they usually move to bottom of
the list. Most of the recruiters are young there, and they find it
weird/suspicious that someone is not easily searchable.

My wife's recommendation is to at least, have a profile with picture and hide
everything else.

However, for senior positions, they don't usually care so much for profiles as
most of applicants applying for those positions don't really have any social
media profiles.

------
mattnewton
Dear god I hope not. I guess I am sheltered as an engineer? I would say no to
anyone so fast if they asked for a Facebook or twitter account, and I never
have heard of this. Do you have sources on this being a prevalent practice?
Have you been asked?

Edit: unless you mean Linkedin or something like github as a social account?

~~~
sillysaurus3
_unless you mean Linkedin or something like github as a social account?_

Those count, unfortunately. But I'm skeptical that a "github resume" matters
much.

LinkedIn seems to matter a lot more strictly for getting offers from
recruiters, though.

~~~
sotojuan
> But I'm skeptical that a "github resume" matters much.

It doesn't. I don't know why people on HN think it does, but in real life,
most people I've worked with ave empty GitHub accounts.

~~~
toexitthedonut
I've had an interviewer suggest to me that I open a Github account, to improve
my chances of getting an offer. After the interview was already over and was
already rejected. But I already had an active Github account, and nobody ever
asked me in the interview if I had one. So I was confused by the suggestion.

------
palerdot
I do not have any social presence in popular social networks like facebook,
instagram and mainly linkedin by choice. I do have a personal static website
though and a github profile.

From my experience, the quality of people reaching out to you particularly not
from linkedin is very high. I personally had made a decision of rejecting
employers who insist on having a linkedin profile. But surprisingly, so far no
one has ever asked me about that and all my employers (present and past) were
ready to hire me even though I do not have a visible social presence (read
linkedin).

But, in extreme circumstances when you badly need a job, this thought of
having a vibrant social presence haunts you (I have gone through it). But
since it is a conscious choice, it is a decision I'm very happy about.

------
onion2k
I think it does harm you not to have a profile, but only indirectly. Employers
_will_ search for you. Having no profile means you're missing out on an
opportunity to make an impression before the interview - candidates with posts
about things they find interesting in job-related fields, or status updates
that make them look like sociable, interesting people, will benefit from that.
Having no profile puts you behind those people.

Mind you, having a bad profile will get you rejected, so no profile might be
better in some people's cases.

~~~
lkrubner
"Employers will search for you."

I said this in a separate comment, but I want to read this here, in response
to what you said. In the last 10 years, I've never had an employer search for
me online. Never.

~~~
aprdm
How would you even know that?

------
nthcolumn
Anecdotal evidence: I was at a rugby weekend dads/sons thing. You meet other
dads from all walks of life, everything from navy captains to surgeons. One
evening, one dude, apropos of nothing whilst banging on about his successful
real estate business said that he would not hire someone who did not have a
facebook account. I was like 'wat? really?'.

~~~
J-dawg
This is both scary and interesting. Did you get the chance to discuss it with
him further? I wonder how prevalent this sort of thinking is.

What's he actually trying to achieve? Presumably in most cases when he
searches all he'll see is a name and a thumbnail photo, given that most people
these days have at least a little concern about online privacy. Unless he's
actually 'friending' all his candidates before he hires them, which would be
super weird.

Also, doesn't Facebook have a setting where your profile doesn't show up in
searches? So he could potentially be rejecting people that actually meet his
own (weird) requirement.

Or maybe I'm reading too much into what was probably just pub talk!

I'm going to start to make a point of discussing tech-related subjects with
non-technical friends more often, because their opinions often surprise me.
Case in point: Theresa May's quest to ban maths.

~~~
type0
> I'm going to start to make a point of discussing tech-related subjects with
> non-technical friends more often, because their opinions often surprise me.

And you would be shocked to hear all the misconceptions and myths that the
general populace have been fed by the media or picked up from someone at work
with Dunning-Kruger effect. It's pointless to try convince them otherwise
unless they are your close friends or family.

------
ionised
From my personal experience, no.

None of my jobs have ever asked for it and if they went looking and found
nothing, I still got the jobs.

Honestly if an employer ever asked me for it, it would be a clear-cut sign
that I don't need to work there.

------
metalmanac
It depends on the specific company, but lots of companies _require_ a Linkedin
profile to submit an application and some companies go as far as requiring an
FB profile. And in cases where social media profiles are optional,
applications which provide them are viewed slightly more favourably than
applications which don't provide social media links. /anecdata

~~~
RickS
>lots of companies require a Linkedin profile to submit an application and
some companies go as far as requiring an FB profile

It baffles me that orgs do this despite the insane signal it sends to
candidates. You're basically filtering for people who are either 1) so
desperate for work that they'll allow their employer to violate their privacy
indefinitely 2) playing weird games where they have second versions of
themselves set up with fake content (I knew people who did this in college.)

------
handojin
Dear god, I hope so.

If a social media presence (or disclosure of a social media identity) is a
condition of employment at some particular (or peculiar) firm, then I think
the only recourse is that I should prefer to be a scrivener and that I should
prefer not to.

~~~
mirimir
See
[http://moglen.law.columbia.edu/LCS/bartleby.pdf](http://moglen.law.columbia.edu/LCS/bartleby.pdf)

------
rodolphoarruda
Social media or social network? Considering the latter, yes IMHO. You got to
be in LinkedIN, at least, because it is what level 1 HR people operate.

------
jecjec
Absolutely, yes, if I am the one doing the hiring. I want to know that you
like technology like I do.

------
ssijak
I get several job offers from all around the world through Linkedin weekly.
Colleagues from the same office who are equally skilled and have a similar
experience, but do not have LinkedIn and other networks, get 0. Go figure...

~~~
paulcole
How many do you accept every week?

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type0
first thing first, what do you count as social media, what does you potential
employer count as social media?

