Facebook might help you keep your job

Photo credit: California Studies Blog

During this economic downturn I would suggest that getting social on Facebook might help you keep the job you have.

Last week Comscore reported the astronomical growth in users of the monster social network Facebook. Naturally, I posted the article on my Twitter account (@kgrandia) and one of my online friends (Chris Eaton) posed a very insightful question: “think the increased facebook users have anything to do with the economy?”

I actually don’t think the economic downturn is resulting in more people signing up or actively using Facebook. If that was the case, we would have seen a big blip up in user activity in mid-September or so and any of the recent numbers I can find for Facebook show a pretty smooth growth curve, like this:

However, my Twitter friend Chris Eaton’s question did get me thinking really hard about Facebook and the real potential it has for helping you keep the job you have during these terrible economic times.

The sad truth is that a lot of people are losing their jobs right now and your employer may be put in that extremely horrible situation where he or she will have to choose who to keep and who to let go. Making such a choice comes down to a lot of “hard” factors like pay-levels, experience and sales performance. However, bosses are human after all and there are deeper cognitive “soft factor” processes at work in these decisions mas well. One of the biggies is empathy. The simplest definition of empathy is the ability to see a situation from “another person’s shoes.”

The more your boss can empathize with the ramifications of letting you go over someone else, the more likely it will not be you getting the pink slip. And the easiest way to increase the empathy your boss has for you is to connect personally with your boss on as many points as possible. The more points of connectedness, the more fully you can put your boss in your shoes.

For example, if your boss knows you have three kids, aged 5, 8 and 10, that your wife’s name is Suzanne and you like to fish when you’re not working your butt off for the company, he or she will more likely connect and empathize with your situation over someone who might work just as hard but know very little about.

Facebook is a great way to quickly and easily expose your boss to multiple points of connectedness.

You can add all sorts of impressive and personal information to your Facebook profile page: family photos, favorite books and films, hobbies, friendly banter between you and your Auntie in Maine and lots more.

So if your boss is on Facebook (you can use the Facebook People Find here) take the two minutes to join Facebook and over the holidays fill out all the various personal information sections (very easy), add a whole bunch of photos and join a few groups you’re interetsed in. Do all these things with an eye to connecting on multiple personal points with your boss. Of course, it almost goes without saying that you need to be honest and genuine with the information you fill out. So if you’re boss is totally into kiteboarding, don’t lie and photoshop your face onto some kiteboarding dude. You will be found out and this is an excersise in connecting with your boss, not lying.

When you’ve got your profile all done out, send your boss a “friend” request and hopefully they’ll take a minute or so to get to know a whole other side of you.

To anyone that is reading this post who has recently lost their job, I am truly sorry. This worldwide downturn had nothing to do with the world’s working class who work tirelessly to put food on their family’s table and everything to do with pathetic greed by massive corporations who should have known better in the first place.

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