5. Be social but be responsible

As much as I dislike it, social networking has become quite a large part of our lives. Some of us use it constructively, others use it in trivial and pointless ways but regardless of my own feelings towards it, social networking can be of great use for student and professional developers alike.

I steer clear of sites like MySpace and Facebook simply because I have no interest in plastering my personal life along with silly memes, pointless applications and all the other antics that go hand in hand with such services across the web. These sites do however hook people and encourage them to share their lives with the x-million other people around the world also using the services. This is where the “be responsible” part comes in, unless you really do take care with the information you publish about yourself, a lot of what you say and do is publicly available. Public means search engines, search engines mean Google and that means the rest of the world. Once something goes out on the world wide web, it can’t be taken back.

So, with this in mind, plan ahead. By all means use these sites but do it responsibly. Don’t go saying how much you hate x company or y person because one day you could try to get a job with that person or company, one quick google of your name and you could lose an opportunity. By the same token if you show an immature and reckless side on your MySpace, Facebook or whatever and a potential employer looks you up, they quite probably will skip to the next candidate and your application will have an appointment with the shredder.

Two social networking sites that I do agree with are Twitter and LinkedIn.

Twitter is a microblogging service where messages of 140 characters or less can be posted either publicly or privately. Aside from the utter useless crap you can find on there such as “In the bath” or “Picking my nose”, there is actually some good, relevant information whizzing around. For example I use twitter to keep in touch with members of the UK development community, get the latest BBC and tech news, catch up with friends and to find out about projects, events and even just useful resources. Used correctly Twitter can be a wealth of useful information delivered right to your web browser or desktop. Client wise I recommend TweetDeck.

LinkedIn allows you to build up your employment profile by listing your past jobs, education, skills, qualifications, etc. This information can then be (optionally) seen by people around the globe. You can link to other people from companies you have worked at, sectors you have worked in, educational institutions you have studied at and more which help build up your profile. Why would you want to do this? One reason might simply be to expand your list of contacts in a given industry, or if you are looking for a job a potential employer might either find or look for your LinkedIn profile to get more information about your working life up to that point. LinkedIn is like an online CV attached to social networking and while I don’t use it heavily I don’t see much harm in using it to promote my skills and experience.