I was sitting in line today, when I struck up a conversation with the director of IT for a local bank. We got to talking about the social marketing aspects of the net and how they had impacted the business over the years. I asked him, just off the cuff if they had any influence on his department’s hiring practice – ie. did they use Myspace to research potential hires? He said they did not at this time, but the question had come up for the bank as a whole. So, my next question to him was, do you think it is fair to use this information? I mean, is what a person does on the web and in their spare time any indicator of how they might perform their job? This is largely a question to get employers thinking – I think it largely depends on the position and the company, but a crazy/derogatory/or otherwise socially unacceptable social networking page could ultimately reflect poorly on the company, its sales or in some way affect its bottom line. How much? As a small business owner you need to decide this and use the information accordingly when you are hiring.

Now, I am not a lawyer, although I do know a few, and I think that they would agree with me that information on the net is fair game when it comes to hiring practices – bad or good information, for that matter. Hiring managers and Human resources specialists can pipe right up! I would certainly like some input on this topic if you have it.

The one that really intrigues me, however, is Squidoo.com. This site has really taken off, and is getting a lot of recognition by top search engines because it is so full of content – quality content. 3 reasons I like the site: It’s free to place as many lenses(terminology for pages) as you wish, You get paid for the revenue your lens generates, and it can provide valuable traffic backlinks to your main website.

I will be testing some of the ways I can use this to my advantage and reporting on it in the coming weeks. If you have any thoughts or successes on squidoo or any other social networking platform, please comment!