Some of your best friends could be people you met at work… and then there’s the rest of them. Do you really have to connect with them on social media?
Question:
Dear James,
I am quite a private person, but I keep getting friend and follow requests on social media channels like Facebook and Instagram from people at work. Some I barely know, some I do know and don’t really get on with, and some I have mutual friends in the office with.
I feel pressured to accept these people rather than single myself out as unfriendly or difficult. But I also worry it’s an intrusion into my private life and the ones I don’t know or necessarily get on with simply want to be nosey.
Personally, I would rather keep my personal photos and life outside of the office to my real friends. What’s the best way round this? What do you recommend?
Carl, Leeds
Answer:
You are perfectly entitled to be a relatively private person, Carl! On the other hand, more gregarious people might have difficulty understanding that…
You could get clever with your privacy settings on Facebook to control who sees what – and then you can maybe accept colleagues as friends. But why bother?! Personally, I would just leave any such Facebook friend requests ‘hanging’, i.e. don’t accept them but don’t delete them either.
If anyone asks, just say casually that you hardly use Facebook and hadn’t noticed their request. When it comes to Instagram and Twitter, I think your best bet in both cases is to set your accounts to ‘private’ so that only your real friends have access and, again, you can just fob anyone else off with the excuse that you’re not really into social media.
From a career point of view, though, if you’re not already on LinkedIn then get yourself on there fast – it’s so important these days. And do make ‘friends’ with all of your colleagues on there, whether you like them or not! At the very least, it may help to ‘compensate’ for you not wishing to engage with them on other more personal forms of social media.
Top Tip:
If you’re a user of social media then do take advantage of a professional ‘social scrub’ service to clean up your digital footprint. One dodgy drunken photo on Facebook could cost you a job offer!
Spotlight On:
LinkedIn has taken off like a rocket over the past decade. It now has over a billion users!
The UK ranks 4 th in the world in terms of the total number of users in a country – but is second only to the USA in terms of the percentage of the population. It’s the vast majority of the so-called ‘working age population’.
So it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to see why I very strongly recommend getting yourself on LinkedIn. If you’re on there already, I suggest you pull out all the stops to make sure your profile stands out from the crowd.
Our Jobs Guru, James Innes, is a best-selling careers author and founder of the world’s leading group of professional CV and resume writers.
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