Abstract:
Social networking sites have steadily gained in popularity since their introduction more
than 10 years ago. As people increasingly count co-workers and other acquaintances
among their networked “friends” on such sites, a natural extension is to use the sites as
employment tools. However, while social networking sites are starting to support
employment search and recruiting practices, many of their users remain unaware of their
inherent professional networking capabilities. This thesis presents preliminary findings
about the use of social networking sites by both employers and job-seekers, and provides
an exploration of what these findings say about the rhetorical use of social networking
sites—including a consideration of the implications and issues associated with the fusion
of professional and social networking.
