Wednesday, April 15, 2009

ReputationDefender Blog: Tweet Tweet, You're Fired!




MSNBC and other mainstream media outlets have picked up on the Cisco Fatty story that involves a woman getting fired for her twitter post. Quoting from the page:


Why waste valuable social networking hours getting yourself “Facebook fired,” when Twitter allows you to humiliate yourself quickly, and in 140 characters or less?


A recent tweet by one would-be Cisco employee proves that when it comes to placing a permanent black mark on your resume via the Internet, Twitter is now the tool of choice. To illustrate, here’s the tweet the now Web-infamous “theconnor” shared with the world:
“Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.”


It wasn’t long before Tim Levad, a “channel partner advocate” for Cisco Alert, shared this open response:


“Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.”


Was “theconnor’s” job offer rescinded? Nosy netizens have yet to suss that out — but they’re doing their darndest to make “theconnor’s” life miserable in the meantime. It didn’t matter that “theconnor” almost immediately set his Twitter account to private and deleted all information from a home page. It was already too late.


Twitter is a great tool to connect people and ReputationDefender supports the emergeant micro-blogging platform. Users should be aware that potential employees are viewing online messages and that the material they post online can both help and hurt their online reputation.