Biz networking a big disaster?
Executives active on professional networks run the risk of leaking business secrets. Is it so?
By Kavita Kukday, TNN |
A lot has been written of how much social networking online can rev up your life, throw new opportunities and even land you a plum assignment. But little has been documented of the downside to online networking.
Rohit Raje, a marketing executive in a leading telecom company, is a case in point. Since the time Raje caught the networking bug, he signed up on a couple of sites like www.orkut.com, www.myspace .com and www.ryze.com.
Essentially, these are places where like minded people band together and share details of their common interests. More recently, placement agencies have started to trawl these sites—ostensibly because on social networking sites, people speak the truth about themselves. That makes it easy for agencies to latch on to the kind of people they are looking for.
Coming back to Raje, during the course of what he thought was a fairly harmless conversation, he let out details of a deal that his company was working on.
Unfortunately for him, the friend happened to be a sniper from a rival company. It cost Raje’s company one of its biggest tenders.
“This is not a one off instance,’’ says Altaf Halde, national sales manager, Pointsec India, a device security company, “Social networking sites are no longer just about trivial pursuits such as dating , or hobby-related hookups. They are also turning into powerful professional networking tools,’’ adds Halde.
Rohit Raje, a marketing executive in a leading telecom company, is a case in point. Since the time Raje caught the networking bug, he signed up on a couple of sites like www.orkut.com, www.myspace .com and www.ryze.com.
Essentially, these are places where like minded people band together and share details of their common interests. More recently, placement agencies have started to trawl these sites—ostensibly because on social networking sites, people speak the truth about themselves. That makes it easy for agencies to latch on to the kind of people they are looking for.
Coming back to Raje, during the course of what he thought was a fairly harmless conversation, he let out details of a deal that his company was working on.
Unfortunately for him, the friend happened to be a sniper from a rival company. It cost Raje’s company one of its biggest tenders.
“This is not a one off instance,’’ says Altaf Halde, national sales manager, Pointsec India, a device security company, “Social networking sites are no longer just about trivial pursuits such as dating , or hobby-related hookups. They are also turning into powerful professional networking tools,’’ adds Halde.
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| Dos and Don’ts • Don’t mention names of any of your custmers • Do not reveal any financial details or company related info under any circumstance • It pays to be skeptical of lurkers on the network forums • Don’t ask fo any work related information from your social contacts • Do your homework thorougly before you decide to trust anyone online |
This is essentially because more often than not you pick friends online depending on areas of interest , which normally overlap with your professional life.
Take Ryze for instance. People on this network come online for professional networking. Here members can post their profiles and bio-data and specify their areas of interest.
If somebody else has that same interest they can send you a message on your guest book. People get talking from here and make likeminded friends.
This has become an online substitute of local coffee shops, where you hang out with friends and discuss everything under the sun. “Inevitably you tend to talk about work too,’’ says Halde.
It’s not hard to fathom why. “It is scary,’’ says Sahil Mathur, chief of IT security at a BPO. One of the first lessons in any business is, to control the flow of information . These social networking circles are making it very difficult, and that’s very frightening . This can become disastrous especially in India which is the hub of outsourcing industry.
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And youngsters working in BPOs usually have sensitive data in their hands such as financial records, health data and such. “Education is the only way to deal with this danger,’’ says Sahil Mathur. “And we are already gearing up for the dangers. Not only are these sites off-limits within the company, but we have started conducting training sessions for all our employees.’’
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