For a bit of fun and what I loosely call research, I hit Technorati every few weeks and search for “I hate my job”. Some very interesting results show up. Personal blogs from Blogger, Journalspace and AOL Journals make up the majority of the results.
Many of the posts are from younger individuals who blog about their disdain for their hourly wage jobs, others are from people that seem sincerely depressed with their lot in life.
This week’s pick: Heather who hates working in the ‘dreaded’ gift shop at the Historical Society
These personal blogs by young employees probably represent the biggest PR issue for large corporations. Most 16 or 17 year olds don’t realize that what they write in their ‘personal journal’ is being indexed by sites such as Technorati and can be found easily by their employers and journalists.
I have a friend that works at a large retail chain in the PR department. For the most part their company is very low on the radar in blogs. Recently though when I did a search in Technorati for the company name I came across a blog post from a teenager who had just started working their. In his post he detailed the training program and videos they watched as part of orientation. His comments were not very flattering.
He doesn’t work there anymore.
7 comments
3/30/2005 at 2:01 pm
Allison_p_c
Before I even got finished reading your post, I was alreading thinking about what a huge problem that could possible be. It is also something that we cover in class with possible posts on our blogs that could have meant trouble.
Lucky for us, we have Robert who screens our blogs and lets us know where trouble could arise. Unfortunately, the rest of the blog world does not have a Robert.
It also seems to me that there has been enough examples of these instances happening that people would realize what they are doing. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the power of the internet. I mean if you want to talk personal, set up a private diary on your personal computer and not on the “WORLD WIDE” web.
With that being said, it is inevitable that we are going to have these problems arise. In the corporate world, I think every company should have a Robert. Other than that I am not sure if this is something that can be stopped altogther. But for now, I say stick with the old fashioned way and continue to make examples out of these people. Eventually, people will realize that there careers and jobs are at stake when they blog about them on the web.
3/30/2005 at 4:39 pm
DeeRambeau
Broadcast bitching…global style. It’s a huge problem when youngsters don’t understand that they’re putting these comments out to the http://WWW. One way to counteract random employee blog bitching that has been embraced by a couple of companies…namely Sun at http://blogs.sun.com, is to allow a blogspace for ANY employee to write ANYTHING they want. It’s called bottom-up blogging. An employee can post whatever they want about the company, products, etc. Sun says that they support this fully and do NOT edit the posts. Great concept and a great, supportive attempt by a firm to be completely transparent in all that they do.
3/30/2005 at 8:17 pm
jrhallett
Sun probably does not have many 16 or 17 year-olds working for them. A company like McDonalds or ‘insert name of mall chain-store here’ does.
I would think that firms that have a large percentage of their workforce making minimum wage (or slightly above it) and have an average age of below 20 would have more issues with this.
3/30/2005 at 9:06 pm
Robert
Makes you wonder if a company using any of the services that scan 400 (or even 4000) blogs is really doing the company any good.
Where are the best services that offer this kind of ‘look into the blogosphere’ for any company, but especially the large ones with all those ‘tween’ employees?
Does the combined weight of these employee gripes have significant impact on the company?
4/3/2005 at 12:02 pm
Claire
After all of the news and rumors about people getting fired because they mentioned their job and things about it in their blogs, I would expect people to be very cautious. But apparently they aren’t.
It is becoming a PR problem for employers. Maybe there should be something included in training for the new employees about it and how it will be punished. Maybe even a form they have to sign stating they won’t mention their place of employment or anything that could possibly be viewed as negative or confidential information in any online journal, blog or otherwise would also be a good idea.
4/4/2005 at 6:43 am
Nicole
Is googling someone’s name really becoming a common hiring technique? It’s really too bad people can’t just write what they want anymore for fear of certain people finding it. I have my personal blog locked, so I guess that’s going to be the next wave of personal blogging. I think there are probably a lot of people who get a kick out of knowing other people are reading about their lives, so having to cover up things you are writing could put an interesting spin on these people who are just blogging for fun.
4/5/2005 at 8:01 pm
Ashley C
Wow, that is almost scary. I guess you really have to watch what you say even in your personal blogs. I am sure everyone complains about their job at some point or another…maybe they should avoid writing their complaints online though!
Robert monitors our blogs and lets us know if we posted something that could get us in trouble later…and some of us have!
I feel a little sorry for that girl who hates her job so much! She sounds like a very negative person…hope she finds a job she enjoys more!