EEVblog > EEVblog Specific

eevBLAB #80 - Is Staying Private Online Good For Your Career?

(1/3) > >>

EEVblog:
An extract from a live show on EEVBlog2
And interesting question was raised: Does staying private and secretive online help or hinder your engineering career prospects?
Does having a presence on social media and LinkedIn help or hinder?
Dave also tells a story of when publishing too much cost him a job at Silverbrook research.
And the value of tailoring your resume.

hamdi.tn:
Hi,

i think this is one of those bipolar subject,
It's positive to be visible and to have some public visibility with personal projects or activity with non-profit organisation, in LinkedIn or personal website, etc ...

It's not when it come to publishing company project (without a clear consent from the company) even if those projects are not tied with an NDA. I noticed also that some engineers are publishing massively in time that are clearly working hours, i think this may be considered by a future employer as either don't have much to do or wasting company time.

Hamdi.

DrG:
It is an interesting subject and I am weighing in openly stating up front that I never hired a degreed EE. I did, with regularity, take in young fellows/assistants/grad. students, into a laboratory. Some had enhanced (but highly specific( EE and mathematical experience. They would typically spend a couple of years in the lab (a *very* regulated environment) - in route to their PhD or MD or something like that. These were all very bright and very focused individuals. So, this is a particular situation that you may not find terribly relevant. Furthermore, for a number of reasons, candidates above that level were evaluated in a qualitatively different fashion.

Routinely, *anything* available online was looked at and I would do that myself as well as turn the candidate over to online scrutiny by other subodinate lab members. This was done *after* a successful meeting and a reasonable CV had been tendered. I never saw any value in those, so-called, professional sites - what is there of significance that is not on your CV? The answer, sadly, is too often just a bunch of self-generated and self-promoting crap.

The point that I want to stress is that at these entry level positions, the single most important factor to me was a low risk assessment. A low risk assessment, while not sufficient, was absolutely necessary. To be clear, I was the one deciding whether it was high risk long before we would get to a formal background check that was done by someone else.

I have no phobia against SJWs unless obsessive, but if I saw any evidence of irresponsible behavior, be it concerning intoxication (of any form), promiscuity, politics, racism, gambling, chauvinism and so on, it was disqualifying.

Anyone working in the lab can screw things up in a very big way - sloppy (or faking) data collection (a nightmare and I would install many covert mechanisms against that, but why worry about it?), unwillingness to report a mistake, disregard for safety, theft, sexual harassment, and so on. Any indication that the person could not get along with others and could not follow SOPs was disqualifying.

Liability avoidance is, in fact, more important than skills in this situation and I think it can generalize to many other situations. Every freaking thing that you have online, especially concerning offline behavior, is examined carefully because they were viewed, by me, as predictors. Let me put it this way, I am not just thinking about what you can contribute, I am also thinking about what you can screw-up.

I left out a ton of stuff that you addressed in the video because I wanted to make that particular point.

coppice:
There are very few things guaranteed to have a positive or negative influence in a job application. Even a CV that includes "time in jail for serial killing" might not be a negative when applying to some of the dodgy outfits that are out there.... although in general a criminal record is not a plus. I have been in numerous interviews where the things the liked or disliked took me by surprise. A key point is that unless the job market is horrible and you would be glad for any work you can find, you really don't have anything to gain by succeeding in every job application. You want to find a place that is reasonably compatible with you.

coppice:

--- Quote from: DrG on September 15, 2020, 02:05:10 pm ---Liability avoidance is, in fact, more important than skills in this situation and I think it can generalize to many other situations.

--- End quote ---
I see organisations take this to an extreme, and only hire people with a great reluctance to do anything at all.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page