My company is probably one of the few that will never block social media websites, primarily because we provide social media monitoring, analysis, and engagement tools for Fortune 500 companies.

Being a Human Resources Manager, these are are also important sites when conducting employee reference and background checks. I also use LinkedIn extensively not only for recruiting but also for professional social networking. LinkedIn has established itself as the premier professional social networking site. I don’t find much professional use for YouTube, Myspace, or Facebook although I have seen an increasing number of companies creating MySpace profiles especially if they are targeting a young adult / teen demographic.

There is increasing discussion around the legality of using social media websites when conducting background checks. You need to be very careful about disqualifying candidates because of what they posted on these types of sites. More on this topic to follow.

This year the first members of the baby boom generation reach age 62 and can qualify for Social Security benefits. 25 million baby boomers will hit retirement age by 2013. By 2018, the numbers will continue to increase dramatically. The baby boom generation is the largest demographic group in the United States, with nearly 80 million people.

Surprisingly,  research reveals that only 4 percent of Companies have adopted any formal procedures for transferring the knowledge and skills of older workers.

The workplace is not the only area where an aging American population is putting stress on business and society, real estate, social security, medicare, and pension programs all are impacted significantly with this shift. Although these are substantial issues facing American businesses and society, there are many international markets that face greater hurdles when combined with cultural and declining birth rate challenges as well.  

 If you are faced with an aging workforce, I would recommend instituting a formal knowledge transfer policy, this will ensure that organizational knowledge is not lost allowing adequating planning time and preparation of the next generation of thought leaders. This will position your organization well for the upcoming years and increase your national and global competitiveness, as studies have shown that this is a weak area in Human Resource Management.

As a Seattle Recruiting Manager, I research every qualified candidate passing muster during my initial phone interview in a variety of manners (google, Yahoo!, myspace, facebook, LinkedIn). I start to think of friends that post pictures of their newborn babies and in effect capturing their lives on the web. In 20 years, there will be a whole generation of people whose lives will be fully accessible to people like me. Decisions to hire will be made with a dashboard that will scrape these historical media files along with previously posted resumes (think they don’t exist?), transcripts, performance evaluations (more discussions around this topic in the future), criminal and credit checks. And oh by the way, companies are already connecting your username with your real life identity.  

In reseaching this fact that what is put on the web stays on the web.  I read  a very well written post by Mitch Joel called ”Your Blog – Your Personal Brand And The Big Long Beast That Is The Long Tail“ 

He is addressing Marketing, Communications, and PR professionals, but I strongly believe it applies to all of us including HR Managers.

“All of the content a Blogger creates is a reflection of their personal brand and, for most, the only reflection of who they are in everybody else’s eyes.

Blogging is still a relatively new channel. All of this content being created becomes part of your Personal Brand’s Long Tail. It will exist forever when somebody does any kind of search on you, and can be accessed by anyone looking for specific content that you Blogged about.”

 Be careful of the personal brand that you put on the web, I (or someone like me) may be evaluating it.