social mediaAs high schoolers, most students do not realize that the pictures or posts they upload onto their social media may be monitored not only by their friends, but also by the public. Depending on the privacy settings, anyone can access someone’s profile and have peek into their lives. That one joke you and your friend made about a certain group of people may have been funny between the two of you, but someone on the outside may see that s discrimination or offensive. Gradually, students are learning to at least utilize the privacy settings so that future employers or admission officers cannot see their private, entertainment lives.

Social media can be used as a means of adding onto one’s resume. It can provide pictures or blogs about one’s hobbies or interests through pictures and informal posts. For example, looking through someone’s Twitter can show the viewer what the user is interested in by seeing what that user follows or tweets. Social media is not only a negative media that can show people the unprofessional side of an applicant. If used correctly, social media can be that extra creative resume. In fact, some people write in their applications to view a certain website of theirs to showcase their interests and achievements.

That being said, future employers or admission officers should be careful with the way they use social media to better understand their applicants. As Bradley Shear, a lawyer specializing in social media in the article says, “colleges might erroneously identify the account of a person with the same name as a prospective student — or even mistake an impostor’s account — as belonging to the applicant, potentially leading to unfair treatment.” There are multiple people with the same names from the same state, same town, or even the same school. For instance, in my high school of a graduating class of 130 students, there were three boys all named Kevin Lee. Just looking for one Kevin Lee through the high school could have resulted in any of those three boys, who differed in their personalities, extracurriculars, and grades. The employers or admissions officers may incorrectly judge that applicant due to investigating the incorrect applicant. It is one thing for them to ask the applicant to open their social media in person or provide them a link of their social media since then, there is certain whose social media one is looking, and another thing to randomly search an applicant’s name and guess who is who.

Through one of the writing courses I have taken in Stony Brook, I have learned how to utilize social media to be an addition to my resume rather than it being a source of entertainment. The class taught me to create a website that can portray not only my writing, but also my thoughts and interests for my future employers and admission officers. Even though it is not certain that my blogs will be seen or read for sure, it is an attempt and effort that can be seen to demonstrate additional skills and interests, which is more than what most applicants would provide in their resumes or curriculum vitaes.

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