Get Out of My Facebook!

If this blog had a subtitle, it would be The Intern Diaries: Day 1.  They arrived today, our new flock of team members – one each for technology, operations, marketing, client services, and communications.  Such a wealth of new energy!

In between getting the drill on who’s who and what’s what around The Gabriel Institute and the obligatory pizza lunch, I tried to get their take on networking technology.  The biggest divide I could think of was LinkedIn vs Facebook, so I was curious where they stood.  They’re onto the economy and there’s no false hope here.  Despite the fact they have an average of another year or so to go, they have no illusions about the job market they’ll emerge into.  But as I expected, they haven’t tuned into LinkedIn for professional networking yet.  Now they all will, and they will be able to put us down as their first business experience – and we’ll be able to tell the world how they did.

We also gave them the HR warnings about being careful what’s on their Facebook page.  The stories flew, and a new dilemma was brought to my hopelessly out of date consciousness: What do you do when your mother wants to friend you on Facebook and you just don’t want her as your friend?

So this is for our new interns’ moms – and dads too.  We tried that ‘be a friend to your kid’ stuff in the 70′s and it didn’t work all that well.  You’ve done a great job, so relax.  We know – we gave your college son or daughter a Role-Based Assessment and that’s why we brought them on board.  They are coherent – the best measure of maturity and potential ever devised – and they have solid Role preferences which we’re going to respect and develop.

So get out of their friendship places and instead, get them to share their Role-Based Assessment reports with you.  You’ll be very proud.

And, by the way, thanks for trusting us with them.  We know they’re precious to you.