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Do your social media postings reflect on your employer? Some organisations seem to think so, finds out Rahul Raj, TimesJobs.com

Bureau

If you think posting inebriated pictures of you behind the wheel is funny and would get loads of “likes” and “comments” on your social media page. Be careful! Your boss might not share your sense of humor. Your promising career trajectory could take a serious hit courtesy a seemingly harmless update you posted on your social media page. Such could be the consequences of your callous social media conduct.

Employers across all domains are increasingly using social media as their hiring and engagement strategy. Employers are even resorting to social media to enhance their employer brand and are using their employees as their brand ambassadors. Madu Ratnayake, Vice President, Virtusa’s social business strategy and global quality framework, believes, in order to attain efficient crowdsourced recruitment, employers need to leverage the sum total of their employee’s social network reach to drive a more personal social sell to potential employees. “You effectively marry social media reach with social business strategy to achieve that.  This is employee referrals on steroids,” he explains.

This has led to increased caution among employers towards the social media content of their employees. The way employees conduct themselves on their social media page reflects strongly on the organisation they work for.

Companies have strict social media policies to keep a check on their employees as their social media postings have the potential to seriously tarnish the company’s image. “As much as a boon that social media can be, it could potentially jeopardize your career if used the wrong way. For example, being disrespectful to a fellow colleague or posting company confidential information can be detrimental to one’s career.   At Virtusa, our social media policy provides team members information and guidelines that they should adhere to while using social media. As they say, the pen is mightier than the sword, in this case, social media postings. Therefore, it’s important to watch what you say and the comments you make. One must always remember that social media can be a fun, useful and convenient way to communicate with colleagues and friends provided it is used in the right way,” says, Sundararajan Narayanan, Vice President and Global HR Head, Virtusa.

Your carefree and candid social media conduct could stir up an organisational controversy that could seriously hamper your credibility as an employee. Sunil Goel, Managing Director, GlobalHunt, believes that employees posting content that could bring discredit to their organisation and sharing sensitive information like business intellectual property of current employers could seriously jeopardize their career. Behaving responsibly on your social media page could save you this trouble.