Business English: Do I have to sign up to Facebook?

A Senior procurement director (41) wrote: After a decade working at a senior level in a multinational, I have begun to look for new opportunities. In my last two job interviews, I have been asked if I have a Facebook account. I do not, nor do I Twitter, nor am I on LinkedIn...

... From what I have seen of such sites, they make my eyes glaze over in boredom and sheer incomprehension. But I got the impression that my attitude towards social media was incomprehensible in the modern business world. Is this for real? Do I have to sign up for social media or networking sites or be a corporate outcast?

Read what Lucy Kellaway, "agony-aunt" of the Financial Times (London), answered:

A year ago, I would have said not only that you could safely ignore social media but that you ought to ignore it as it makes people less efficient. But now I have changed my mind. You have to join in simply because everyone else does; if you don't, you will indeed be an outcast. That might be fine if you were a poet but it's not fine in the world of procurement.

Lucy Kellaway

Take a selective approach

Reluctantly, I have signed up to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn because it is not fine for me to be an outcast either - in fact, it is a downright disgrace for someone who works in the media to be so hopeless about social media. However, I have yet to feel any benefit from dipping my toe in, though this failure to get anything out might be because I can't be bothered to put much in. The only difference it makes for me is that every day I get requests from people I have never heard of to be their "friends" or join their "professional network". And then, when I ignore them, I get further e-mails reminding me that I haven't replied.

I suggest you take a selective approach. Join LinkedIn, which doesn't take long and merely means posting your CV online. If I were you, I'd leave Twitter alone. Unless your heart is in it, it will be a great way of advertising to potential recruiters how pitifully few followers you have. As for Facebook, I am surprised that the interviewers even mentioned this - unless they wanted to check whether you are up to dodgy things in your spare time.

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Show your interest in the future

The truth is that most companies have not yet worked out how useful social networking is to their business. It may allow them to find out what customers think but it also allows them to waste a phenomenal amount of time wading through crud. But such is the feverish excitement, evidenced by the appetite for LinkedIn shares, that no one can afford to say they simply don't get it.

For you to stand to one side makes it look as if you aren't interested in the future. That is a disaster. Next time you are asked about social networks in an interview, compose your face into an expression of interest and wisdom. Tell them that you find LinkedIn enormously useful but say that, equally, you are wary of spending too much of your time on such sites as there is also a job to be done.

Aus: The Financial Times, London. www.ft.com