Social Media and Work

 

Social Media and Work

I Lead in.

A.   Take 1 minute to write down your associations with the word ‘social network’. 

B.   Compare your list with other students. What similarities and differences do you have?

C.    How can social networks be useful to people looking for a job?

D.   How can employees use social networks to advance their careers?

E.    What are the professional social networks employees can use? 

II Match the words to their definitions. Use four words in your sentences.

1.	to get  sucked into something	A.	to intensify
2.	to enhance	B.	a flight scheduled to depart at night and arrive the next morning (a flight on which a passenger cannot expect to get much sleep)
3.	to  outnumber	C.	able to understand how someone else thinks
4.	slick	D.	without any expression
5.	empathetic	E.	to become involved in an activity  that you do not want to be involved in
6.	trivial	F.	to prepare in writing
7.	to draw up	G.	making you  feel very embarrassed
8.	deadpan	H.	not showing feelings or emotions
9.	matter-of-fact	I.	a relatively insignificant  position from which further progress may be made
10.	to accost	J.	having little importance
11.	cringeworthy	K.	smooth and effortless
12.	innocuous	L.	to approach and address someone aggressively
13.	toehold	M.	to be greater in number than something
14.	red-eye	N.	completely harmless

 

III Read the text and fill in the gaps with the words from the list. Use all the words.

 know; reconnect; connections; professional networking; professional; high school; comfort zone; illustrates; users; tweets; network; company

 

Social media and career development typically don’t mix. Scrolling 1) _____ or getting sucked into the latest TikTok craze do not exactly enhance your work prospects. Unless, that is, the social network in question is LinkedIn. Founded in 2003 in Silicon Valley as a platform for 2) _____, and purchased in 2016 by Microsoft for $26bn, it has become a fixture of corporate cyberspace, with more than 800m registered 3) _____ worldwide. Its 171m American members outnumber the country’s labour force. 4) _____ students are creating profiles to include with their college  applications. The chances are you probably have one, too. How do you make the most of it?

 

For those who have yet to link up with LinkedIn, the first, critical, step is fashioning your profile. First, choose a slick photo: think visionary resolve meets empathetic authenticity. Next, list your educational and 5) _____ history. Remember, nothing is too trivial. Went to a selective kindergarten? Say so; it 6) _____ that you were a winner from a tender age. As you draw up your list, make sure that it reads in the most deadpan way possible: no adjectives, no personal touch. The mechanical and the matter-of-fact is at a premium.

 

Armed with your profile, you can get down to business and begin creating your 7) _____. You need to have 500 or more 8) _____ in your profile to be taken seriously. To achieve this, you need to step out of your 9) _____ and accost complete strangers. Do not treat it as you would inviting classmates you do not know to your birthday party, which in real life makes you look desperate. On LinkedIn, cringeworthy is not  part of the lexicon. People can amass 6,315 connections, of whom they actually 10) _____ maybe 300.

 

Remember that cousin Dimitris your mother always mentions on the phone, who works at Bain Capital in Boston? What better way than an innocuous LinkedIn invite to 11) _____ —and get a toehold in his private-equity network. And that man who sat next to you on the red-eye back from Chicago? Even if you recall only his first name and the 12) _____ he works at, LinkedIn’s algorithm should be able to let you track him down with relative ease.

 

IV Match the words to their definitions. Use four words in your sentences.

1.	to strike gold	A.	a person who is successful or dominant in their field
2.	top dog	B.	to make something less severe
3.	to flaunt	C.	to put a lot of effort into making something successful or strong
4.	fashionista	D.	to find or do something that brings you a lot of success
5.	to mitigate	E.	pleasure
6.	humble-bragging	F.	to show something you are proud of to get admiration
7.	poised	G.	having gamelike elements that encourage participation
8.	unflappable	H.	to accumulate
9.	to rub it in	I.	a devoted follower  of fashion
10.	to forge	J.	letting people know about something you are very proud of in a way that makes it appear as if you are complaining or embarrassed
11.	to rack up	K.	having a calm and confident manner
12.	gratification	L.	to make someone feel worse about something the person already feels embarrassed about
13.	gamified	M.	able to stay calm in a difficult situation

V Look through the text. Eight sentences and sentence fragments have been removed. Read the text and choose from the sentence fragments (A-K) the one which fits each gap (1-8). There are sentence fragments that you do not need to use.

 A.    a way to present the most envy-provoking version of yourself

B.    Your network will explode

C.   that I was invited to participate in the Innovation Leaders panel

D.   connect with every analyst in JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and UBS

E.    to looking for your new role

F.    If you want everyone to know

G.   Take a moment to recognise one year of being connected to your co-worker

H.   attract recruiters, and even land you your next job

I.      Ignore automatically generated prompts

J.     LinkedIn is a great source for salary data, learning new skills, and can even be a platform for marketing your products and services

K.   and motivate you to be more ambitious

 

If you are an analyst at Goldman Sachs, 1) __________. Don’t worry, they are thinking the same thing, so are likely to oblige. While you are at it, you might as well approach everyone with a pulse at Goldman, too. If a higher-up—best of all, the CEO— happens to accept, you have struck gold. The boss’s existing connections will treat you as more of an equal; those desperate to get one degree of separation closer to the top dog will come begging. 2) __________.

 

Next, flaunt your every success. LinkedIn is to white-collar workers what Instagram is to fashionistas: 3) __________. “Deeply honoured to have been ranked in the Global Elite category of Thought Leaders by [insert name of obscure organisation which hands out random titles].”

 

4) __________that you were a speaker at the Bloomberg Global Regulatory Forum, attach photos of yourself on the podium—and own it. Posting is, in essence, showing off, so any attempt to mitigate invariably comes across as humble-bragging: “I was told by colleagues I should be sharing my successes. So I am proud to announce 5) __________.”

 

While you are feeding the app your achievements, do not pay too much attention to those of others—that will allow you to appear poised and unflappable, not envious. 6) __________like “Congratulate Dimitris on starting a new position as co-head of European Private Equity at KKR”. These are designed to rub it in your face 7) __________.

 

You need to play it cool so disregard all automatic prompts such as “8) __________”. That time is better spent forging fresh connections to rack up the numbers—which, in the gratification-seeking, gamified world of social-networking, is ultimately a big part of what LinkedIn is all about. According to the latest notification, “You appeared in 178 searches this week.” So you must be doing something right.

 

VI Match the words from two columns to make collocations used in the text. Use five  collocations in your sentences.

 

 

1.	career	A.	out of your comfort zone
2.	enhance	B.	the most of
3.	social	C.	it cool
4.	labour	D.	essence
5.	high	E.	and professional history
6.	create	F.	worker
7.	college	G.	down
8.	make	H.	relative ease
9.	educational	I.	across
10.	personal	J.	application
11.	get	K.	network
12.	to step	L.	work prospects
13.	private-equity	M.	force
14.	track	N.	off
15.	with	O.	touch
16.	white-collar	P.	school student
17.	hand	Q.	generated prompt
18.	in	R.	down to business
19.	showing	S.	network
20.	comes	T.	development
21.	automatically	U.	connections
22.	play	V.	out
23.	forge fresh	W.	profile
24.	rack	X.	up the numbers

 

 

VII Comprehension check. Read the texts in Task III and Task V. Mark the sentences as True (T) or False (F). Correct the false statements.

 

1.    Social media and career development typically are not connected.  

2.    LinkedIn is a social network that can enhance your work prospects.  

3.    LinkedIn was founded in 2016 by Microsoft as a platform for professional networking.  

4.    LinkedIn has still to grow in popularity for professional networking.   

5.    The number of  America members on LinkedIn is lower than the number of Americans who are either working or actively looking for work.   

6.    Only college graduates can use LinkedIn.  

7.    For new LinkedIn users the first, critical, step connecting to people.  

8.    It is recommended to choose a slick photo for a LinkedIn profile.    

9.    It is important to list only the most recent details of your educational and professional history.  

10.LinkedIn profile should use no adjectives and have no personal touch.

11.You need to have 1000 or more connections in your profile to be taken seriously.  

12.To achieve the necessary number of connections LinkedIn users can connect to strangers.  

13.If you are an analyst at Goldman Sachs, it will be difficult to connect with every analyst in  JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and UBS.  

14.If the CEO accepts your invitation, your network will grow very fast.  

15.It is recommended to be modest about your achievements on LinkedIn.  

16.Showing achievements on LinkedIn and Instagram has different purposes.  

17.LinkedIn helps white-collar workers present the most envy-provoking version of what themselves.   

18.It is better to share achievements on LinkedIn without additional comments or explanations.  

19.Not paying too much attention to the achievement of other LinkedIn users will make you appear envious.  

20.Ignore automatically generated prompts on LinkedIn.  

21.like “Congratulate Dimitris on starting a new position as co-head of European Automatically generated prompts on LinkedIn are designed to help you reconnect with your network.  

22.Do not ignore automatically generated prompts on LinkedIn designed to help you reconnect with your network.  

23.LinkedIn is all about forging fresh connections to rack up the numbers.  

24.You know you must be doing something right if you appear in few LinkedIn searches.  

 

VIII Vocabulary focus. Follow the link below.  Study the words and word combinations using flashcards, check your understanding. Take a test and check your knowledge. Play matching vocabulary game (match words to their definitions to make cards disappear).

 

IX OVER TO YOU. Discuss the questions with other students.

A)  Is LinkedIn used by many employees in your country? Why or why not?

B)   Is LinkedIn used in the industry you work in/would like to work in?

C)   Which recommendations in the texts surprised you? Is there any advice that you disagree with?

D)  Which of the tips for LinkedIn users will be the most useful for you or people working in your industry?

E)     Which two tips can you add to the list of recommendations given in the texts?