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Positive Digital

Footprints

By: Brandee Braaten and Joni Mailhot

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In the future, your “digital footprint” will carry far more weight than anything you might include on an resume.

- Chris Betcher

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+ What is a Digital Footprint?

+Your Digital Footprint tells you…

Where you’ve been online.

Where you are online.

What you’ve done online.

What you are doing online.

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What are Social Networking Sites?

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Social Networking Sites are…

Online communities that enable people with shared interests to communicate and connect through a variety of networks.

Contributes to your Digital Identity.

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+ Ways Employers Use Social Networking Sites to Recruit

Posting ads for job openings.

To search for potential job candidates using specific key word searches.  To screen job applicants by reviewing potential candidates.

+Why is there an interest in using Social Networking Sites to Recruit?

Employers seeking to find high quality candidates for job openings know they need to go where those potential candidates are.

And statistics show that membership in social networking sites are growing exponentially.

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A survey in Dec. 2008 of 286 hiring managers and human resource professionals in Canada, indicated employers are looking to use the Internet as a vehicle for finding potential employees. In particular, 9% were planning to increase spending on recruitment through the use of social networking sites.

Earlier in 2008, a survey noted 12% of Canadian employers were already screening candidates via the Internet on a regular basis while 19% planned to begin using these resources for the same purpose that year.

A June 2008 survey of 3,169 hiring managers and human resource professionals in the US indicated that 1 in 5 use social networking sites to research job candidates. 34% found information during their searches that lead them to reject a potential candidate from the selection process.

Statistics from Careerbuilder.ca

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+ 2010 Statistics

Facebook has over 400 million active users.

Twitter has around 75 million users, but a lot of current users are inactive.

In the U.S. the active unique social network audience grew roughly 29% from 115 million in February 2009 to 149 million in February 2010.

Active unique users of social networks are also up nearly 30% globally, rising from 244.2 million to 314.5 million collectively.

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What can an employer find out while looking for information online?

Many social networking sites have fill-in type forms that ask for a whole host of personal information. Others give you options on what information you wish to make public.

Many people don't consider what they say on social networking sites to be 'public' in nature. Instead, they see it as a forum to connect with friends when in fact, anything put on the Internet is public domain.

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+Check your digital footprint…

+Questions?

+Resources:

http://vestaltech.edublogs.org/2009/12/19/digital-footprint/

http://www.slideshare.net/djainslie/your-digital-footprint-2887070

http://donnasealeconsulting.typepad.com/workplacehumanrights/2009/01/using-social-networking-sites-in-the-hiring-process-smart-move-or-human-rights-trap.html

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2010/01/19/a-collection-of-social-network-stats-for-2010/

http://www.adobe.com/education/designschools/careers/digital-footprint.html