When we were
students in the seventies and eighties we parted at the end of the course with maudlin
tears and promises to keep in touch.
Which we often broke and didn’t keep up with one another, apart from
occasionally bumping into a few friends or trying to make it to the alumni meets,
to talk about grey hair or the lack of it and who resembles Lord Ganesha the
most! Today’s generation is luckier. End
of the course parties are only one more celebration and do not really mean you
will not continue to meet each other. It
is also one more occasion to put up photos on Facebook, where you continue your
interaction virtually.
Facebook
pages, some secret and some open, also serve as an exchange of information about
jobs. It is a sort of good Samaritan act
where former batch mates look out for each other by posting potential jobs
opportunities in their own organization or other organizations. This is especially the case with fresh
graduates and those who have been out there for a couple of years.
The hidden
danger in such groups is that the more senior batches are also members of the
same group pages. Say a guy, who is
frustrated in his current position, writes in the e-group saying, “I am looking
for opportunities in Finance and Analytics domains in Delhi. Have over 4 years
of experience in financial services including equity research and investment
banking support”. He would be not only
letting his classmates know that he is looking for a new job, but perhaps also
his boss who may be from the same school. Or maybe not his boss, but someone on
the Compensation Committee who would be deciding his pay increase; may be someone in HR who would be handpicking
a person for a plum assignment.
Another
instance would be where someone posts a job vacancyoin the group page saying “
Hey – I have the following vacancy coming up in my company…..”. Another guy then comments asking “Send me
your email id” and yet another guy very helpfully tags a classmate or junior
“Jumbo -- For your attention”. Your
intention to seek greener pastures would immediately become known to the bosses.
Are you yet ready to let them know yet?
In the
former case, at least the information is about the person himself/herself. However, in the second case, “Jumbo” is
probably not yet ready to tell the whole world.
He has, confidentially, reached out to some of his classmates but his
privacy is breached by publicly telling the whole alumni group that he is
looking for a new job. Jumbo also could
be, as part of his job, hiring from his junior lot for a position in his
company. With what level of credibility
would he do that when it becomes known that he himself is planning to move –
may be entirely for personal reasons? Would you want the world to know you are
getting frustrated, or worse about to get fired from your present job?
Sounds far-fetched? In a twenty year old business school where I
teach, I know of a recent management trainee who is my student, his boss is my
student from one of the previous batches and his one up manager is from one of the
earliest batches of the same school. I also know that all three people are on
the same e-group on Facebook (obviously they draw different meaning and purpose
from belonging to the group).
Recently I posted a small note on this group page, which I belonged to as well, pointing out the danger of such breaches of information. In response to this, another student wrote in saying that he enquired about a job from a consultant classmate about a job posting which the consultant friend was headhunting for. It turns out that the job was in the same company that he was working for! It is a different matter that he was seeking out the information for a friend and not for himself. But the embarrassment and the niggling feeling that your boss would think that you have become footloose may remain?
When Facebook
pages are created for a particular graduating year, this may be not much of a
problem. But its usefulness as information exchange would be rather limited? However,
when a page reaches a few thousand members running across a couple of decades,
it becomes as open as the PA system at Dadar station. One needs to think twice
before commenting, and tagging on posts? It might be better to choose to send
individual messages or emails?
Bala@Panaji
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