Social Networking

     A very common way of using social media nowadays is job recruiting! As students and future fresh graduates, sometimes it is difficult to get yourself noticed by employers. Companies have started to use sites like LinkedIn to connect with millions of potential employees. It is a more expansive network than manual advertisements and meeting every employee in person. It would be impossible to meet with millions of employees efficiently, but with LinkedIn, Steckerl, a recruiter of talent for Microsoft, can exponentially reach out to thousands. According to Steckerl in Langfitt's article, "I don't need to go to Bob directly to find out who Bob's friends are. Or Bob's friends' friends. So, effectively, I have a thousand contacts that could potentially lead me to 100,000, now I have 8,500 contacts that could potentially lead me to 4.5 million" (Langfitt). Being able to contact colleagues of colleagues multiplies the candidates, making the recruiter's job to find the best fit employee much easier and more likely. However, once they have passed the preliminary screenings, it is still necessary to get a feel for them in a personal interview. This process makes finding employment much more efficient and I expect it to continue to be the dominant method for a long time.
     Social media is not always used appropriately, or efficiently. Some users harass others while remaining anonymous on the internet. There are some that fall in the middle, using legitimate services, but are subjective in their experiences. In the article "Can You Trust Crowd Wisdom?" researched discovered that most reviews for products were voted by the same people because other users didn't bother voting. This can skew the data, says Vassilis Kostakos, a university professor in Portugal, in Grifantini's article. Kostakos says, "they can paint a distorted picture of a product if a small number of users do most of the voting" (Grifantini). Every individual has their own preferences and experiences with products and services. If it is only a small percentage of users writing reviews for all the products we see, we may be biased toward how they think. Consumers may be persuaded to not purchase something that otherwise was a perfect fit for them. Even with reviews from our peers, we should always take their testimonies with a grain of salt.

Works Cited

Grifantini, Kristina. "Can You Trust Crowd Wisdom?" MIT Technology Review. MIT Technology

     Review, 16 Sept. 2009. Web. 04 Oct. 2016. 

Langfitt, Frank. "Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting." NPR. NPR, 22 Nov. 2006.
     Web. 04 Oct. 2016.