So I'm doing an engineering internship at a company that gives “career development series” ted-talk-type of speeches by different people once a week on zoom, basically giving career advice to interns, which is cool.
Today though, the guy was focused on telling us about how we should watch what we post on Facebook or Instagram, because recruiters and potential employers might see this and “be turned off”, and “wonder if the guy partying every week end with his shirt off is going to be dedicated to work”.
I'm not really as “extreme” as many of you guys here in my antiwork sentiment, but this really didn't sit well with me so I raised my hand (in zoom you can “raise hand) and expressed my disagreement, and said that no credible or respectable company should factor in what people do in their free/personal time as part of their candidacy. It would at best be some false assumptions: what makes you think you can't be a good worker and be a party animal on the week-ends? How credible are any conclusions that you might draw from stalking a social media page, to the point where you'd actually use these conclusions as factors in evaluating candidates?
He mostly avoided the question and went with a “let's move on” response, which I understand, and to be completely fair, I probably got more emotional than anything, because I can see scenarios where maybe you're in a tough spot financially and you really want/need a job, and you might want to literally maximize your chances of getting a job by any means necessary.
I just felt it's not something you should say to a bunch of engineering interns. Like, no. We should know our worth, and not work for companies that are like 'omg eww this guy parties too much!', what the fuck. To me any company that does that sounds like a dodged bullet anyway.