29 June 2007, ST
By Lynn Lee
WHEN his application to be a relief teacher was rejected recently by the Education Ministry, poet and playwright Alfian Sa'at turned to his blog to question the decision.
He posted his e-mail correspondence with a ministry spokesman, without naming him. He had asked the MOE to explain its decision, and it had replied but provided little clarity on the actual reasons.
The local Internet community went into overdrive speculating on the reasons Mr Alfian, who had been given 'provisional approval' by the ministry, had his application turned down eventually.
But no one seemed struck by what seemed to be a pertinent question in the episode: Should correspondence between an employer and employee, whether potential, current or former, be made public and subject to such debate?
Or is this the latest trend in Internet usage, where cyberspace has become a platform for the employee-employer relationship to play out?
But perhaps the question hardly mattered to netizens because nothing has become too personal to put online for the more than one billion users of the Internet.
There is a deluge of options on getting personal, in spaces such as social networking sites and blogs, where users list personal details and reveal their innermost thoughts.
Little is taboo. Relationship highs and lows, likes and dislikes, and work and the place where it happens all get airtime, and eyeballs.
According to online intelligence service Hitwise.com, 6.5 per cent of all Internet visits made by 25 million users in February were to the top 20 social networking sites. These include MySpace and Facebook.
Add to that the more than 70 million blogs out there, with 1.4 million entries updated daily.
There are a few positive instances of how the Net has been a benevolent broker in the employee-employer relationship.
Take the experience of American blogger and Web designer Adam Darowski, (http://www.darowski.com/tracesofinspiration/) who wrote about the trend of blogs becoming 'the new resume' in March.
'Blogging is the perfect way for a candidate to give an employer a more detailed sales pitch - to show he can 'talk the talk' (as opposed to just fill a resume with buzzwords),' he said.
It held true for him. Two months later in May, he wrote that his blog had scored him a new job. He posted a quote from his new boss, which spoke of how his blog posts had allowed the company to get a great first impression of him, which helped him stand out from other candidates.
Mr Darowski's posts, his boss added, revealed that he was self-motivated and could think beyond immediate problems, among other qualities.
In Singapore, well- read blogs have brought in advertising dollars for their owners. These include food blog Chubby Hubby (www.chubbyhubby.net) and the personal site of local blogger Wendy Cheng (www.xiaxue.blogspot.com).
But recent examples show a flipside to having an online persona.
CNN.com reported recently on how a photo in a 27-year-old American woman's MySpace account led to her university barring her from getting a degree in education, which she needed to become a full-fledged teacher.
The photo, captioned 'Drunken Pirate', showed her in a pirate's hat and drinking out of a plastic cup. It 'promoted underage drinking', said the university, which awarded her an English degree instead.
She is now suing the university.
Last June, The New York Times carried a piece on how more tech-savvy companies and bosses are using search engines like Google and Yahoo to conduct background checks on job applicants.
In one case, a consulting company boss went online to suss out an applicant from a top college.
At Facebook, the candidate described his interests as: smoking marijuana, shooting people and obsessive sex.
He did not nail the internship.
American university career counsellors are catching on to this phenomenon, and urging students to ensure that their online identities, set up in the spirit of fun, do not come back to haunt them.
Human resource consultants here say online checks on applicants have yet to gain popularity.
At most, companies send resumes to 'resume sleuths', who hit the paper trail to look up a candidate's job, education and credit history.
But it will be a matter of time before employers here too also turn to online profiling to check out current or potential employees.
A quick scan of the profiles and blogs of Singapore netizens shows employers will indeed find out a lot about them.
For instance, there are those who have no qualms dishing the dirt on their colleagues, albeit without names, while blurbing their company's website in the sidebar.
Others complain about their jobs and lives in their online profiles, with bad spelling and grammar to boot. Not stating where they work does little to help them stay anonymous.
Perhaps employers who do check up personal online profiles will view them with a pinch of salt. After all, some of what is said on personal profiles could be posturing; similarly, sensational comments on blogs could just be there to gain hits.
In the case of Mr Alfian's blog, future employers could possibly see his post as evidence that he has little respect for employer-employee confidentiality.
Or not. They might well appreciate his cogent, well-crafted request to MOE to justify its actions and welcome his persistence in seeking answers.
But whichever way you slice it, the onus still lies with netizens to protect their real-world reputations by asking themselves these questions: What do I want my online presence to say about me? Does my virtual identity portray me accurately?
This would be a good start to ensuring that the Net does not end up hosting a resume you never knew you had.
By Lynn Lee
WHEN his application to be a relief teacher was rejected recently by the Education Ministry, poet and playwright Alfian Sa'at turned to his blog to question the decision.
He posted his e-mail correspondence with a ministry spokesman, without naming him. He had asked the MOE to explain its decision, and it had replied but provided little clarity on the actual reasons.
The local Internet community went into overdrive speculating on the reasons Mr Alfian, who had been given 'provisional approval' by the ministry, had his application turned down eventually.
But no one seemed struck by what seemed to be a pertinent question in the episode: Should correspondence between an employer and employee, whether potential, current or former, be made public and subject to such debate?
Or is this the latest trend in Internet usage, where cyberspace has become a platform for the employee-employer relationship to play out?
But perhaps the question hardly mattered to netizens because nothing has become too personal to put online for the more than one billion users of the Internet.
There is a deluge of options on getting personal, in spaces such as social networking sites and blogs, where users list personal details and reveal their innermost thoughts.
Little is taboo. Relationship highs and lows, likes and dislikes, and work and the place where it happens all get airtime, and eyeballs.
According to online intelligence service Hitwise.com, 6.5 per cent of all Internet visits made by 25 million users in February were to the top 20 social networking sites. These include MySpace and Facebook.
Add to that the more than 70 million blogs out there, with 1.4 million entries updated daily.
There are a few positive instances of how the Net has been a benevolent broker in the employee-employer relationship.
Take the experience of American blogger and Web designer Adam Darowski, (http://www.darowski.com/tracesofinspiration/) who wrote about the trend of blogs becoming 'the new resume' in March.
'Blogging is the perfect way for a candidate to give an employer a more detailed sales pitch - to show he can 'talk the talk' (as opposed to just fill a resume with buzzwords),' he said.
It held true for him. Two months later in May, he wrote that his blog had scored him a new job. He posted a quote from his new boss, which spoke of how his blog posts had allowed the company to get a great first impression of him, which helped him stand out from other candidates.
Mr Darowski's posts, his boss added, revealed that he was self-motivated and could think beyond immediate problems, among other qualities.
In Singapore, well- read blogs have brought in advertising dollars for their owners. These include food blog Chubby Hubby (www.chubbyhubby.net) and the personal site of local blogger Wendy Cheng (www.xiaxue.blogspot.com).
But recent examples show a flipside to having an online persona.
CNN.com reported recently on how a photo in a 27-year-old American woman's MySpace account led to her university barring her from getting a degree in education, which she needed to become a full-fledged teacher.
The photo, captioned 'Drunken Pirate', showed her in a pirate's hat and drinking out of a plastic cup. It 'promoted underage drinking', said the university, which awarded her an English degree instead.
She is now suing the university.
Last June, The New York Times carried a piece on how more tech-savvy companies and bosses are using search engines like Google and Yahoo to conduct background checks on job applicants.
In one case, a consulting company boss went online to suss out an applicant from a top college.
At Facebook, the candidate described his interests as: smoking marijuana, shooting people and obsessive sex.
He did not nail the internship.
American university career counsellors are catching on to this phenomenon, and urging students to ensure that their online identities, set up in the spirit of fun, do not come back to haunt them.
Human resource consultants here say online checks on applicants have yet to gain popularity.
At most, companies send resumes to 'resume sleuths', who hit the paper trail to look up a candidate's job, education and credit history.
But it will be a matter of time before employers here too also turn to online profiling to check out current or potential employees.
A quick scan of the profiles and blogs of Singapore netizens shows employers will indeed find out a lot about them.
For instance, there are those who have no qualms dishing the dirt on their colleagues, albeit without names, while blurbing their company's website in the sidebar.
Others complain about their jobs and lives in their online profiles, with bad spelling and grammar to boot. Not stating where they work does little to help them stay anonymous.
Perhaps employers who do check up personal online profiles will view them with a pinch of salt. After all, some of what is said on personal profiles could be posturing; similarly, sensational comments on blogs could just be there to gain hits.
In the case of Mr Alfian's blog, future employers could possibly see his post as evidence that he has little respect for employer-employee confidentiality.
Or not. They might well appreciate his cogent, well-crafted request to MOE to justify its actions and welcome his persistence in seeking answers.
But whichever way you slice it, the onus still lies with netizens to protect their real-world reputations by asking themselves these questions: What do I want my online presence to say about me? Does my virtual identity portray me accurately?
This would be a good start to ensuring that the Net does not end up hosting a resume you never knew you had.
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