Communication is such an important part of everyday life. Whether we are communicating on a personal, social, or business level, there are different things that we need to keep in mind to maintain a healthy balance of communication. Organizations, in particular, value the type of people they choose to represent their businesses. In this week’s lesson, we assessed how overconfidence in e-mail communication is centered around egocentrism and producing messages that have meanings interpreted differently between the sender and receiver. When working in a business environment, we can see why this is an important factor to consider. We do not want to send out messages to coworkers or media to the community that could negatively affect the vision of the business.
Were you are that 93% of hiring managers screen their potential employee options via social media (Davidson, 2017). It is even stated that 55% of the time, candidates are reconsidered based on information that they find (Davidson, 2017). Although most of the time these screenings are done looking for references to drugs and other illegal activities, employers can use your social media postings to their advantage. This helps them to see what type of writing you do and over what interests you do them on. Davidson (2017) states, “66% of hiring managers said they would hold poor spelling and grammar against candidates” ().
If hiring managers look at what you write and how you write it, then you must really consider the different attribute biases that could go into play as well. When all we have are words to communicate, is there emptiness to them? Are we really saying what we mean? According to Ritter (2017), “Without any information other than words—typically, very few words—the meaning we make out of the cryptic electronic messages we receive is necessarily shaped by our own feelings and expectations. Consequently, what we believe is being said may have very little to do with what the author wishes to communicate” (). Sometimes the way we take in information isn’t the same as others. What we say may have an entirely different inflection on another individual.
Overall, we need to be aware of what we write and how we write it. Different individuals can take things different ways. I’m not saying we need to be overly defensive about the types of things that we write, but we need to understand that everything we say can have a bigger meaning and larger implications than we think. Can you think of a time when you may have fallen into any of these categories?
References
Davidson, J. (2017). The 7 social media mistakes most likely to cost you a job. Retrieved from http://time.com/money/3510967/jobvite-social-media-profiles-job-applicants/
Ritter M. (2017). Why is there so much miscommunication via email and text? Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/contemporary-psychoanalysis-in-action/201502/why-is-there-so-much-miscommunication-email-and