Even if you are now only a student with limited or no work experience, it is not too early to begin building a professional identity and your own company—Me, Inc. This is an identity that you’ll want to post and carefully cultivate on some of the popular social networking sites and that will establish you as a serious, desirable employee.

Obviously, Me, Inc., has only one, part-time employee (you) and probably hasn’t been in business very long. But, given the discussions about social networking in this chapter, there is much you can do to enhance your identity as time goes on—and also some things you can also do to avoid mistakes.

Requirements

1. Identify at least four strengths that you think would make you a desirable employee. Is “education” one of them?

2. Identify at least four mistakes that individuals make to hurt their employment chances. Do you think you would ever make such mistakes?

3. Which social networks or other websites would you use to market Me, Inc.? Name at least three of them.

4. Suppose that you ultimately land an entry-level job at a large company with several levels of management. After working four months on the job, a senior manager several levels above you notices your account on Facebook and requests to be added as a friend. Would you approve him or her? Do you think such a request is appropriate? Why or why not?

5. Continuing Question 4, suppose the probationary period for your job is six months. Until now, you’ve received monthly job evaluations of “satisfactory” or “exceeds work requirements.” However, you post a comment on a social networking site indicating that you don’t like the job and hate your boss. At your next job evaluation, your boss mentions that posting and terminates you “for cause.” Do you think this is ethical? Why or why not?