Facebook danger
Today on the cover of the Globe and Mail our dear province was featured as Ray Lam, the NDP candidate for Vancouver – False Creek resigned after some embarrassing pictures surfaced on Facebook. The pictures included Ray with his pants down showing his underwear and with a hand on a woman’s breast. Oh dear.
The dangers of Facebook… As someone who used to recruit people for a living and now advises clients on how to recruit most effectively, I know that when recruiting, googling someone and checking them out on Facebook is a “de rigueur ” part of the recruitment process. What the heck was Ray thinking? Seeking political office is asking thousands of people to select you for the important job of representing their interests within the government. It is the ultimate recruitment.
To not be “holier than though” I decided to do a quick test on myself. I do not have a Facebook page but am on Linkedin and have a corporate website. Taking a bit of a deep breath… I googled my name. What came back? Well there is a famous Suzanne Boyd – not me :). She used to be the editor of Flare magazine and there are lots of articles on her. There was my biography on the Financial Post Executive Blog (I blog for them) and on the second page of return results there was an article for which I was quoted in the Province newspaper a few months ago. No embarassing pictures…pheew. But to all of you out there that enjoy posting party pictures/naked pictures/crazy pictures on your social media sites, just know that it ain’t all that private. To those of you recruiting who are not googling and facebooking candidates – you may want to start doing it.
Poor Ray may have been a fantastic MLA… but alas, he has been taken out by Facebook.
Peoplestuff 