Blogging Could Get You Fired!

I’ve just read an article about an employee being dismissed from her workplace for gross misconduct over what they had commented on in their blog. Not their corporate blog, their personal blog. I cannot go into too many details as I have not read the said offensive blog article just that the employer didn’t take too kindly to it.
Well it just goes to show one has to be careful with what one says in a public domain.
There is however the other side of the coin. The employees’ perspective of their job duties. If their company had let them know with some sort of legislation regarding what was published on the Internet then I daresay the whole mess could’ve been avoided. Therefore it comes as no surprise to me that since the incident occurred corporate’s are now releasing documented guidelines on what employees can and cannot do or say about their company outside of the office with regards to the Internet.
But still, surely it is common sense that after you’ve let all your work colleagues know you have an online journal about your life, not to then go and slag off your work place. Someone is bound to see what you’ve called your boss and report it to them, if not your boss themselves. This should go alongside not disclosing company dealings.

On a follow up to this I had a conversation the other night with some undergraduate friends of mine who are set to graduate soon and have started the job hunt. They were making a point to me that employers were not starting to look at social networking profiles as part of an interview process. My friends were making the point of that if this were the case then where do you draw the line on which parts of your life are shown on the Internet. Personally I think that you should have no inhibitions over what you show as long as it brings over the real you. If you don’t get a job over your FaceBook profile then the company that were interviewing you probably didn’t take you that seriously anyway. So no loss there.

Martin
Natural Search Project Manager