...my two cents.
The other day I received a friend request on Facebook from a name I didn't recognize. When I looked at the photo of the person requesting my friendship I didn't recognize her because she had a Halloween costume on! I was able to view part of her profile but the information available did not reveal enough information about who she was. I could see her name was "Jane Doe" (which I didn't recognize) and I could see that she was from a city in Florida but, I couldn't see her education information or her work history and she didn't personalize her friend request.
So I did not accept her friendship.
I didn't decline the friend request... I sent her a message looking for more information. She did not respond to my message.
It was at that moment that I truly understood the importance of information sharing. If you are going to ask people to be your friend on Facebook or any other social networking site it would be best if you have a photo of yourself without the Halloween costume and at least include a little bit of information about who you are and where you've been so your "friends" can confidently welcome your friendship - especially if you are going to use these sites to help with your job search Add even more value to your friend request and Include a personal message. A simple "Hi my name Jane Doe and I am interested in a career with Sodexo" would be sufficient or "Hi Kerry, remember me? We went to college together in 1988."
What about you?
Do you accept all friend requests even if you don't know who they are?
4 comments:
...I'm with you Kerry - I always look for something about the person so that I know who I'm listing as a friend in my profile. Are you interested in a career with Sodexo or did we attend the same college? As a recruiter, my interest is in social networking to assist with introducing Sodexo to potential candidates and to stay connected to colleagues in the industry. kg
It's very tempting to accept any friend request just to grow your network. But all it takes is for your news feed to be filled up with "its complicated" relationship updates; throwing snowballs, and invitations to every imaginable cause for you to realize the need to be selective.
Still, I would accept friend requests if they were people that I might not know but are looking to connect for my work or around a common interest like loving the Red Sox or picking on Yankee fans!
No. I don't (usually) accept "friends" without knowing them -- or at least having something obviously in common with them like having gone to the same college together. I think that defeats the purpose of a social network. Networking is not about gathering as many friends as possible. Its about helping each other find opportunities by connecting them with each other.
I agree with you. I wouldn't have accepted the friend request without more information.
Sean Harry
I, too, do not blindly accept friend requests, particularly on Facebook. There are FB social groups for the purposes of casual conversation, but I find the ability to block things on FB profiles from general public perusal to be a good thing worth safeguarding.
That said, if I do have a public blog (which I do for an personal hobby of mine, my horses), I keep it vanilla in more of a "tails of my horse" type blogging rather then specific personal information. In the day and age of cyber stalking, it just makes sense to have our own personal "firewalls".
Post a Comment