Ilana Gershon

Rather than giving advice, this narrative is about the advice given; it looks, from an anthropologist’s point of view, at employment in the workplace of America’s corporate world.

If resumes and interviews don’t provide the information needed to make well-informed hiring decisions, what options are available to the job seeker? Are all prospective employees equal players in the employment game? What happens when the advice benefits the company more than the job applicant?

What skills do you need? Should you specialize or become a jack-of-all-trades? Or should you focus on what services you can offer to the company? Do you think of yourself as a business?

Being hired seems to be a complicated process, one with no singular right or wrong way in the approach. Everyone may complete the same standardized form, but everyone must also find a way within the confines of that standardization to show their own distinctiveness.

With the Internet advertising available positions and the ease of online applications, job seekers should be aware that the hiring manager might not ever see their applications. So how do those seeking employment make certain the right people in the company notice their applications? Is networking truly the most reliable tool for being hired? Should job seekers consider such options as developing their own personal brand in order to sell themselves to their prospective employers? And just what constitutes a good employer/employee relationship?

Explore the benefits and handicaps of tools such as LinkedIn; consider endorsements and recommendations. Examine second-order information, how you present yourself on Facebook, and whether or not your profile picture represents you in the best light possible.

In today’s world where hiring practices often mean more than just the application form and interview, job seekers must also consider social media, personal qualities, what happens when they get the job, when a job is simply a stepping-stone, and how leaving a company may have become the new normal in today’s job market.

At a time when so many people are finding themselves unemployed, there’s much to consider in this informative and timely review of hiring trends and practices.

Chapter notes and an extensive bibliography are included following the narrative.… (mehr)

It's fascinating how profoundly social media is altering our society and how society is reacting to the new forms of interaction brought about by technological change. In Break Up 2.0, Ilana Gershon, a lecturer in the Department of Communication and culture at Indiana University, examines the use of new technological media in the context of relationship break ups. Whether it's breaking up via text message, a change of Facebook status or an email, Gershon explores dating in the digital age.

Despite only working with a small sample of students who volunteered to participate, Gershon uncovered a variety of ways in which her students both use and interpret newer forms of communication. She discovered, essentially, that the social rules and conventions around media are still evolving and there is not yet a unified view on what is and isn't appropriate in regards to interpersonal communication.
The vignettes from the students she interviews are an interesting window into the social negotiations taking place especially in regards to the increasingly public nature of relationships.

The issue with books that examine social media is that the landscape is changing so rapidly that by the time the book is published the relevance of its findings has to be considered. When this study took place in 2007-2008, Facebook was a social platform primarily the domain of American college students, it has become much more mainstream in 2012, and its usage has continued to evolve. However Break Up 2.0 still has relevance in today's negotiation of relationships through digital media and it is an interesting examination of popular culture. The conclusions tend to be repetitive though so the book begins to drag and the language is more academic than accessible. It is a University Press title so it's intended audience, I assume, is sociology students but it could have easily been something with wider appeal, with a slightly different tone.… (mehr)