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Employers could use new personality profiling software on jobseekers' tweets to see if they are right for a role.
IBM developers believe they can successfully assess a person's psychological traits by analysing the 140 characters they use on Twitter.
The software scans the most recent tweets, be it hundreds or thousands, to develop a personality profile.
Quote:
Researchers claim words used in tweets reveal a person's character traits.
According to the research, people who use words like perfect tend to be perfectionists.
Those who are deemed more caring use words like 'we', 'friends' and 'family' and people who were seen as more individualistic used words such as 'words' or 'school'.
Longer words are associated with people likely to get on with their colleagues and conscientious people talk about their achievements.
Michelle Zhou, from IBM’s Almaden Research Centre in California, which developed the software, told Technology Review: 'We want to use social media to derive information about an individual—what is the overall affect of this person? How resilient is this person emotionally? People with different personalities want something different.'
This is one of many things that tie into the criticism I have of this social media stuff; is there going to be a day when employers expect you to have Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc, thus screen you out if you do not? So the mindset of the employer is, if you do not engage in this social media stuff, you must be hiding something/anti social/not a good fit/etc, so we will not hire you.
I can understand expecting Linkedin, but twitter or facebook? There are actually a lot of people getting rid of their accounts for a number of reasons. If it isn't something required for the job itself (i.e if you work at a local news station and they want you to have a work facebook) they can't require you to have it.
So the mindset of the employer is, if you do not engage in this social media stuff, you must be hiding something/anti social/not a good fit/etc, so we will not hire you.
I doubt this will ever be the case. Social media is still unnecessary for most people. It's a personal choice. Not have SM accounts won't be held against you unless the job specifically calls for it. Most jobs don't.
I see social media as free personal information. If the person puts info out there for the public to see, why can't an employer look at it?
The answer: don't use social media or don't put out crazy stuff.
I doubt this will ever be the case. Social media is still unnecessary for most people. It's a personal choice. Not have SM accounts won't be held against you unless the job specifically calls for it. Most jobs don't.
I see social media as free personal information. If the person puts info out there for the public to see, why can't an employer look at it?
The answer: don't use social media or don't put out crazy stuff.
I agree. Post normal things or activities related to what you are looking to do. Leave the Spring break pool party photos if you have them for your private collection. People get screened out for this all the time. Twitter is useful for gathering info because some tweet everything they do during the day and and night. Privacy has gotten less and less and people themselves are responsible for this when they put everything out there.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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Overall for the unemployment rate, it doesn't matter, because someone will get the job regardless of how the employers evaluate the candidates. For the person that has trouble finding a job, anything like this is seen as another obstruction. It's good for people to post things like this to make others aware of what some companies are doing. This, like the strange psychological tests, are rare exceptions. Most companies still use the resume to make an initial cut, the normal interview process to determine the best candidate. The biggest reason for failure to get a job is still the sheer numbers, having to come out #1 out of 100 or more.
Replying more to the thread here than the article about IBM. This is truly one good reason to not link all your social networking accounts together. Why give the employer ammo to spy on you? Twitter works good for some industries, while it does not for others as the same with Linkedin which is related to the business world more so than Twitter is.
Twitter is more of a microblogging texting type of social network and very different from most other types of social networking sites. People who work in marketing, sales or HR, for example, probably do well with Twitter or Linkedin. For others, it is a toss up and it depends on how you use it related to your job in my opinion.
For me and my field (IT), Facebook is rather personal and I would keep it totally separate from my work. Obviously there are other social network website portals to mention, but I would just keep the more personal ones away from any type of professional work or employer.
Social media, also gives prospective employers a look into how you may be in maintaining privacy about your work place. A lot of people on facebook as an example, complain about their company and things they do and how they operate. Things they want to be kept private.
Social media, helps the companies spot future problem makers, and people that will not maintain confidential information about an employer and blab about them all over the place. People are very dumb about what they put on social media posts. Imagine people that have put pictures of what they stole the night before, and were arrested by the police the next day for doing burglaries. Pictures of them beating up and even killing someone, and can't figure out how the police caught and convicted them. A woman I recently read that posted about the man she was having an affair with, and could not figure how her husband knew she was cheating and divorced her.
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Thankfully, I don't tweet and only facebook to ooh and ah over a new baby or cute cat. I think I am safe.
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