Everyone is a multiple personality. At least as far as the effect on his environment is concerned. Depending on who we communicate with, we take on different roles.

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Everyone has different roles

A man, for example, will usually behave differently with buddies over an evening beer than towards his Ms. - and be Appear in everyday working life and towards his Executive is something completely different. These role changes may be more pronounced for some than for others, but it is comparatively normal for the same person to correspond to different role models when dealing with society - and not just since the invention of the Internet. What is new, however, is the number of possibilities that the Internet to be available. We can move anonymously and have a foreign identity with a different gender or Age assume. We can appear in chats or forums under pseudonyms, get funny avatars and ours without make-up Opinions give the best - or do exactly the opposite.

And even if we appear on the web under our real names, we often misrepresent ours Behavior also to the respective network - for example with Xing, for example, with emphasis on seriousness, with Facebook emphatically cool and emphatically funny on Twitter. This game with a multitude of different identities unsettles many Peoplewho don't know how to deal with it. Does anyone now use Twitter privately or professionally? And can you make professional contacts at Facebook Make friend requests or is it perceived as too private? New communicationRegulate necessary because the boundaries between private and public identity are becoming increasingly blurred.

Authentic or idiotic?

Many internet users are idiots! At least if you go by the Greek original meaning of the word. Because in ancient Greece idiot was a person who did not separate the private from the public. And that is exactly what many people do when they present themselves on the Internet. Because as the study “Facebook Profiles Reflect Actual Personality, Not Self-Idealization ”from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz shows that most people in social networks want to be as completely themselves as possible and express their own personality.

In cooperation with German and American colleagues, the Mainz psychologists examined a total of 236 German (studiVZ / meinVZ) and American (Facebook) user profiles. Questionnaires were used to ascertain the actual personality traits of the profile owners and their idealized self-image (ie how they would like to be). The so-called Big Five were recorded as personality traits: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness to experiences. Then external judges saw the user profiles and gave their impression of personality. The external judgments were then compared with the actual personality and the self-ideal of the profile owner. It turns out that the spontaneous impressions of the foreign judges correspond to the actual characteristics of the profile owners and are not falsified by their self-idealization. The results contradict the widely held belief that Online-Profiles are only used to create an ideal of oneself, an idealized virtual identity, so to speak.

Too much openness creates fear

This openness makes many people Anxiety. Because, according to the common opinion, it may be all well and good to behave as you are in private life. But too much openness has lost nothing in public and even in the professional environment. She seems kind of idiotic. Or not?

In October 2010, Uwe Knaus, Daimler's blog manager, received a memorable one Application for a social media internship: “I am addicted to social media… yes, I hereby officially acknowledge myself. Nothing can sweeten my day more than the golden ringing of a new message on Facebook and a hoped-for retweet ... Yes, it is ... I keep receiving reports of harassment for following people on the street. And worst of all: ... My boyfriend now only speaks to me as @Schatzi ... The only thing that can help me now is the structured use of social media. I count on your support. "

The sender was the Regensburg graduate Natascha Müller, who caused heated discussions among HR managers and social media experts. Because Knaus had published the application, initially anonymously, in his private blog - not without giving his own impression: "At first I thought: That's not possible! Someone made a joke, or someone else submitted a fake application. Let's assume that Write to is not fake. Then it's amusing, frankly, Honestly, funny, outstanding and the applicant is remembered. But it doesn't fit Daimler - or does it? If Die Dame had applied to an agency with that, she could probably have started tomorrow. thoughts upon thoughts. She has at least achieved one thing: I deal with her application for an above-average length of time and intensively.” And that was exactly what it was Success von Müller's application: With her cheeky, unconventional manner, she not only made the blog manager of a global automobile company think, but also received a great deal of attention, mostly with approval, via Twitter, among other things. So openness and authenticity as a strategy for success in our time?

Not every openness is well received

The matter is much more complicated and multi-layered. Because not every form of openness is well received. The management consultant Olaf Hinz even warns against overdoing it with authenticity: “What is needed is a coherent appearance or a coherent staging. And it is precisely staging that also has the role models/expectations of the Employees, colleagues or the audience in view. Because who highly personal authentic and 'honest' comes from his professional environment fast perceived as 'too close' and 'too private'. I think it needs a professional appearance that is neither adapted nor too private by 'keeping a balance' between authenticity and the performance of the role: a coherent staging."

The political scientist Eva Horn, who used to work in the state parliament of Baden-Württemberg, masters this production perfectly on her preferred social media channel, Twitter: with her green hair, the rather random snapshot and the cheeky saying “I often stay long up, drink a lot and I'm ashamed of all of us” her profile is taken more as a private and therefore particularly authentic channel. Nevertheless, she also thinks carefully about what she tweets and what not, because she knows very well who is reading everything - and what misunderstandings the interlocking and Private and Public can lead:

“With self-expression in social networks, it's like everywhere else: some do it more than others, it's just part of it. However, I would never tweet any crap to get more followers. That would be dishonest. What you write has to fit you. I keep very private things like my love life to myself. But people are allowed to know that I'm a real missanthropist and sometimes drink a little more. Spontaneous expressions of feelings too, even if that sometimes causes irritation: I once tweeted 'accidentally started crying' - after that many people thought I must be feeling really bad because I'm doing this publicly. These are just brief snapshots. There are just a lot of people who don't understand the irony and cynicism with which Twitter pushes topics to extremes in 140 characters. That has to suit you. I've already gotten a lot of professional contacts and job offers through Twitter, and I also tweet officially for the Greens - they've already noticed that I'm good forms can. However, private statements have no place in the official account of a party or company, you have to strictly separate them, otherwise it will look unprofessional!”

Unintentionally famous - what now?

Anyone who visited the Rheinkultur Festival in Bonn on July 02nd, 2011 had a good chance of becoming famous. Not because he was suddenly discovered as a musician. But the WDR took a photo and enlarged it in high resolution so that you could zoom in and recognize every face and published it as the “largest German festival panorama” with 25.000 people. But that wasn't the worst. The WDR called http://rheinkulturpanorama.de/ to mark yourself or friends and acquaintances on the photo - optionally with or without a Facebook, where you can tag people in photos for a long time and assign them to contacts. That's exactly why the WDR held the SALE probably for a successful gag - but bloggers and lawyers saw it a little differently.

"Measured by German law, these concepts are not permissible," notes Thomas Stadler, specialist lawyer for IT-law in his internet law blog. And John F. Nebel, employee of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, writes: “The scope for the individual is becoming smaller, the freedom to act unobserved is shrinking and in the back of the mind a thinking is slowly forming that on account bears.” After all, WDR gives users the option of having their faces pixelated. All they have to do is send in a screenshot of the section in which they can be seen, give their telephone number and prove that they are that person, for example with a driver's license photo. So in order to become anonymous again, you have to disclose more data!

A picture says more than 1000 words

Admittedly, a lot of people may not care if someone knows that you were at the Rhein-Kultur-Festival on July 02nd, 2011. But some don't either. But they now have to live with the fact that after entering their name in the search engine, one might find exactly that picture when entering their name. But tagging and marking photos is just the beginning: In the meantime, software can also automatically recognize people in photos and assign them to a previously entered name. This is not really new: image processing programs such as Picasa, iPhoto or Photoshop Elements already have this function. What is new, however, is that you can no longer use it offline for yourself and your own photo collection, but online - and therefore usually visible to everyone.

Because Facebook now has face recognition - since the end of 2010 in the USA, since spring 2011 also active in Germany. When users upload new photos, Facebook these with existing photos on which people are already tagged. If that System finds sufficiently high similarities, the system suggests marking the new image with this name as well. Now, for general reassurance, it can be said that facial recognition systems are not yet working really well and only recognize a few people really well. It is also really unlikely that, for example, beach photos that someone accidentally took of us with their mobile phone would appear on the Internet in this way under our name. However, this could change soon, because such systems are constantly being improved.

Google, for example, offers an app with Goggles, thanks to which smartphones can assign information on the network to photo subjects. However, Google immediately denied a CNN report about a possible mobile face recognition: Technically, such a function would be feasible, the data protection concerns were Companys however too big. So it could be in Future no Problemthat we all walk around with a small mini face recognition and thus assign personal information to other people on the street or at a party on the net. And what's more: With a well-functioning facial recognition system, it would easily be possible for data from surveillance cameras to be collected using the FacebookImages are matched. Names, addresses, personal preferences and even the movement profiles of unsuspecting citizens would be just a click away. Even if that is still a long way off, privacy advocates are already sounding the alarm. Because even if the collection of biometric data is only allowed under German law if the persons concerned have expressly consented, the matter is legally not that simple: Because in the opinion of Facebook The laws of the country in which the company has its European headquarters do not apply here, but rather the laws of the country in which the company is based - and that is Ireland.

Face recognition in Facebook: Disguised for shopping?

What remains for the individual so far is help for self-help. At Facebook you can at least partially deactivate facial recognition - even if that gives the illusion of a supposed security that, according to Stiftung Warentest, does not exist: “Many reports on the Facebook- Suggest face recognition: The function can be deactivated. A well-known daily newspaper, for example, says: 'This is how the automatic face recognition can be switched off: Under -> Privacy-Settings -> Custom setting at point -> suggest photos of me to friends -> click edit settings. “Enabled” is selected there by default. If the function is set to “Blocked”, face recognition is switched off. 'The way described is correct, but the assessment goes far too far: According to Facebook only the suggestion of a name for the picture is omitted. Face recognition as such apparently continues. Only those deep in the Fac can bring a little more data protectionebook-Help system hidden and barely understandable guide to delete the information for marker suggestions. However, this only affects the data on images you uploaded yourself. If other facebook-Users post pictures and save information about them, those affected cannot do anything themselves. All you have left is the other Facebook-Ask user to delete. "

Jokers are already joking that in the future we will all only go shopping masked up. But maybe there is another one Solution: Just use the right make-up technique. Designer Adam Harvey, a graduate of New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program, has discovered that excessive makeup, applied in the right way, prevents facial recognition. On his website, Harvey explains with many videos and photo examples how this should work: Among other things, it is about emphasizing parts of the face that are not otherwise emphasized, for example baking instead Eyes and in this way to practically invert. According to the inventor, the algorithms of the currently available face recognition software could then no longer calculate the faces correctly.

Business, matching and beer drinkers: when the private becomes professional

Whenever I ask students in lectures which social networks they use, everyone is there hands above. You already guessed it: Facebook is meant of course. But when I ask if Facebook also uses it professionally, usually only a few hands stay up. The unanimous opinion is that Xing is responsible for professional purposes. The American competition Business-Network Linkedin, is slowly coming in Germany, Xing, on the other hand, has been a well-known factor in Germany for a long time.

For a long time, Xing seemed to be on the decline, but has been trying to keep up for years. But when it completely rebuilt its functions, some users felt overwhelmed with the new function. Exactly the calmer slowness and the clear setting options to protect your data from strangers' eyes is something that makes Xing more attractive for many people than the far more confusing Facebook or even the chaotic Twitter. In the opinion of Martin Salwiczek from the Mühlheimer LVQ Further Training GmbH, many appreciate the slowness here, as they are not constantly under pressure to communicate, but instead find contacts clearly sorted and can easily find out about events. For years, Salwiczek has shared the possibilities of the Internet with participants in further training Job Search sounded out and knows what makes Xing so attractive when looking for a job:

“I looked after a rather reserved participant. He created his Xing profile in such a way that he could be found in his industry and looked in the power search for people who offer what he is looking for. So he landed on a production manager's profile and looked at it without Contact record. The production manager, however, became aware of the visitor  I aufmerksam. He was so taken by his profile that he wrote to him. In the end, we were able to agree on a collaboration.”

Personal vs. Professional identity: The matching has to be right!

For something like this to work, however, one condition must be met, without which almost nothing works on the Internet: the matching must be right. In other words: the pot has to find its lid. Because regardless of whether you are looking for jobs, partners, pictures or topics: The reason why we usually find what we are looking for within a few seconds is that the things we find are provided with the appropriate titles and tags, i.e. keywords, that identify them Search engine algorithms allow them to be found. At Xing, this works by entering the appropriate keywords in the “I'm looking for” and “I'm offering” fields of your profile. That sounds quick, easy and practical - and it is. However, only if you can also enter square-practically-matching search terms in the fields, because you have, for example, a clear defined, light understandable job title. If you can't do that, you'll simply fall behind with this method!

The problem with this is that more and more people will be looking for a job in the future. After all, the philosophy of practicing a profession you have learned for the rest of your life has gradually become obsolete in Germany too. Svenja Hofert, one of Germany's leading career advisors, writes: “The answer to the question 'What is my job?' gets trickier every year, every week in the knowledge society. Hardly anyone works in a trained profession... functional areas such as Marketing, Human Resources, Accounting dissolve, diversify or are flanked by new departments. They are then called Regulatory Affairs or Corporate Social Responsibility or....?"

In your work, Hofert found that it is already becoming increasingly difficult to find suitable job offers in job markets because very different terms are often used for the same job: "What kind of job am I looking for when I want to do something in the marketing area? what different supporting activities include? It could be a marketing assistant, it could be a project assistant, a junior manager and, yes, exactly, a chief secretary is also possible. " According to Hofert's research, it only becomes really difficult with highly qualified positions that require specialist knowledge. Because: “The same activities in the field of sustainability could be found under“ Research Associate ”,“ Manager Sustainability ”,“ Employee Sustainability ”and“ Expert Sustainability ”.”

Finding a job as an authentic personality: openness as a marketing method and driver of innovation

So what to do? An intelligent search, semantic search, which is already rudimentary, is seen by some as a solution. However, the basic problem is not that Technology, but the ever more rapidly changing professional requirements due to technical development: This is what creates new professions, even before there is a name for it, let alone one Vocational Training would exist. With that all others have to Methods when looking for a job, which requires more than simply comparing supply and demand: For example, the willingness to make your private interests public and to develop new professional interests from them.

A method that programmer Regine Heidorn used when looking for a job. The Berliner has been active on Twitter as @bitboutique for five years now. She finds 75 percent of her jobs here in direct exchange. An important part of your acquisition strategy: honesty. “If I can't do something, I say so and recommend them customers to someone from my network,” reports Heidorn, who does not shy away from extreme standpoints in public discussions on Twitter. Her customers, she says, appreciate exactly that: “Many are happy if I tell you exactly which programming services they need – and which ones they don't. And they trust me precisely because I'm so critical and don't praise everything about the green clover!"

Heidorn also uses other social networks, such as Xing - but Twitter is her favorite tool: "On Xing I can only do mine Competencies put it in a profile, I can also communicate things like my hobbies or personal preferences via Twitter - and do it so briefly and concisely that people read them even when they don't have much time," the programmer explains the difference. For her, the difference lies in the speed: “In other networks or on blogs, customers and future bosses first have to spend time to find out more about me. On Twitter, in just 140 characters, it's really quick - so there's a greater willingness to get involved." But this often results in unexpected job opportunities: Heidorn, for example, is a fan of geocaching, a kind of scavenger hunt with mobile devices. From this the developed Idea a mobile excursion - and from it a teaching position at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Economy Berlin. In this way, Heidorn creates jobs before they even arise. The mixing of private life and work is becoming a driver of innovation, as Heidorn explains: “A job description that I write on a Xing profile or on my website is pretty much old hat. Sort of mainstream. But we invent things and activities via Twitter in dialogue that have not yet had a name – real innovation potential.”

Exactly fitting to your own identity: How do I make my job?

Creating your own job in dialogue, according to your own interests: That may sound idealistic, unstrategic and haphazard - and yet it could be the principle of success for them Career choice be the future. Because how Dr. Miriam Meckle, Professorin Communications Management at the University of St. Gallen, explains, can only be genuine by chance Innovation arise – in line with the theory of evolution:

“If we increasingly rely on algorithms, then we limit ourselves to a theoretically indescribably large, but always deterministic and therefore finite set of choices. And looking further, this means that everything that can exist in the future has already been created in the past. Because the elements of the calculation must all already exist for it to work. And even if I use a randomized algorithm to calculate random bits, their number and characteristics are fixed. So it changes the nature and sequence of the outcomes, but never in such a way that the outcomes are inherently random. All future is thus always replication and recombination of what is known from the past. We remain our own Status right.”

Broaden your perspective: people out of the drawer

In terms of our future professional life, this means that if we continue to only look for jobs in job advertisements and job exchanges that already exist, it may seem quicker and easier at first glance. Regine Heidorn also admits this: "I don't even apply to some job advertisements because, for example, I have a completed Study missing and for sure there are also potential customers who prefer to see testimonials.”

For many, this deterministic approach is certainly what leads to success. But only at first glance. Because we then also miss the chance to shape our profession, even our life, ourselves. Just as we want. Or as Regine Heidorn describes it: "I have exactly the jobs and customers that match my skills and that suit me!"

Reinventing professions and with them a whole new social system, Gunter Dueck, mathematicsProfessor and Chief Technology Officer at IBM Germany, the crucial task for the digital future. According to his prognosis, many professions will become important verlieren, because thanks to the internet we can do it ourselves – for example buying tickets or researching information. What remains are the difficult advisory and administrative tasks, for which Germany needs more skilled workers. But Background alone is not the decisive factor, as Dueck explains: “Complexes Tasks require not only professional skills (this is even provided to a large extent by the Internet), but social and emotional dexterity Intelligence, management talent, negotiation skills, personal responsibility, entrepreneurial spirit.”

Casting show or panel discussion - how does communication work?

In the future, success at work will no longer only depend on pure specialist knowledge, but above all on personality. And how do you show this other than through openness and dialogue - a method that people like Regine Heidorn are already using successfully? Perhaps, therefore, the differences between business networks and private networks will disappear completely in the future, as the Hamburg personnel consultant Alexander Fedossov describes: “Soon you will be called HR, Networkers, marketers, etc. simply no longer need other networks. Period. Facebook will next to everyday Communication can be used with friends just as well for direct recruiting, lead generation and networking. And much better than Xing. Since Facebook offers a much more lively and realistic representation of a person today. "

Even if this all-round network is not the future, not necessarily facebook You can tell from these statements that companies and HR professionals have long since discovered social media in order to find employees or to market their products - even if not always successfully. Who social media not only as Funplayground, but wants to use it as a professional means of obtaining information or self-portrayal, should know how communication works in social networks. Because it follows its own laws.

“Social media is not a technical thing. Facebook is not social media,” wrote Zakhar Krivoy, head of the department Digital Public affairs at E-Plus in late 2010 in an angry blog post. That may sound to some as if he made it clear that fruit is not just made of apples. Nevertheless, it gets to the heart of the problem: When it comes to social media, many people think primarily of Facebook, simply because it's the only network they use. And many see social media as a tried and tested means of self-expression - especially in companies that see it as just another marketing channel. Just like a casting show: I present myself and collect fans. There are countless tools, services and networks in which one should be represented, and new ones are added every day. Now that every company has its own company website and the market is served accordingly, resourceful agencies, self-appointed experts and Adviser discovered something new with them Money to earn can: They simply tell their customers that today you can also have an elaborately designed Facebook-Page, i.e. a presence of his company on Facebook needs to be successful. Or they chatter on their unsuspecting customers on social media newsrooms that cost 60.000 euros.

Communication and helpfulness: from person to person

What then lacks the manpower and the money is what really matters with social media: communication. In many companies and even social media agencies, this is done on the side by interns. It would be a matter for the boss. But many self-proclaimed experts lack this mindset, as Sachar Kriwoi so aptly complains: “For me, social media is a pleasant, authentic, relaxed, direct, quick, courteous, dialogical and human way of communication. Whether they are on facebook, on twitter, in blogs or forums, maybe even in a café, is irrelevant. It is important to listen needs recognizes, satisfies needs, properly represents the company one works for, makes a significant contribution to the success of the company by helping, asking, answering and persuading.”

Exchange of information and mutual willingness to help - even if one can argue with certainty whether Kriwoi's employer E-Plus actually operates that way online, this picture is extremely appropriate. Because the question shouldn't be what others can do for you - but what you can do yourself for others. Or Henry Ford said long before social media: “The secret of success is to understand the other's point of view”. This is a far cry from the casting show philosophy: Because social media is actually more of a panel discussion, a large get-together - or a marketplace where people talk, sell and trade. Social networks thus fulfill a basic need for human communication - one that we have unfortunately lost a little today. It's not for nothing that I often feel in social networks as if I happen to meet people again on the street - more spontaneously and unplanned than via eMail or telephone would be possible. But also possible if your own circle of friends no longer lives in the same city, but has spread over half the globe in the course of professional mobility.