For a young person who is searching for a job, the internet is a place they spend a significant amount of their time on a daily basis. Take for example, the case of a young man in search of an internship position during the summer holidays. His activities on the internet would be divided into the active job search and internet browsing for leisure. The beginning of the session daily is usually focused on the job search. First of all, the individual logs in to his Yahoo email account. He does this to check if there are replies for their applications from previous internship applications. On this occasion, he finds two inbox messages from the human resources departments of two different firms. The user quickly reads the feedback about his internship applications. He then writes back a thankful message to the potential future employers in which he thanks them for their consideration. He spends about thirty minutes and then he logs out of the email account.
However, before he logs out, he realises that there are also three messages from different consumer products companies. One of the messages is a correspondence from the sales department of an electronics store that specialises in laptops and personal computers. The sales team had sent a form that the user should use to fill out the specific laptop specs that he had inquired about during an earlier session. One of the other messages contains an online brochure of affordable holiday destinations for the summer. The last one is an advert about a new type of credit card being launched by the bank of the individual. The user downloads the feedback form for the electronics store and logs out of the email account.
He then begins his routine search for jobs by opening his favourite jobs website. The user opens a new tab on Indeed.com which he visits daily to search for jobs. While searching, he notices some another job agency that is displayed by AdChoices from Google. This is an advertising feature by Google that generates ads based on content from frequent websites visited (Roberts and Zahay, 2012). The user also clicks on the advertisement and opens the new job website in new tab. The new jobs website asks him to sign up and to upload his resumé as new member. This is because most companies do not receive paper resumes nowadays (Waldman, 2013). Thus, jobs websites require users to provide softcopy resumes for the data bases. His search on the two websites yields only two opportunities and he feels better qualified for both positions. He spends about thirty minutes to apply for the two jobs and quits the jobs websites.
The last thing on his mind is to log into his social network accounts. He first logs on to LinkedIn and then also opens his Instagram account in a different tab on the browser. LinkedIn is popular among college students since it helps in job connections and professional networking (Friedman, 2013). From his Instagram account, he finds a link of a blog from one of his friends on that social website. The article is about a controversial current event which attracts the curious interest the user. After clicking on the link and reading the interesting piece, he offers lauds his friend for the article and offers his opinion by leaving a comment. Feeling satisfied with his activities for the session, he then terminates the entire browsing session after 45 minutes.
There are a number of data items that can are captured from the various websites that the user visits. For example, his Yahoo account captures his user name and password. The data items from the jobs websites would include official names, gender, age, address and field of profession. On the other hand, the social networks would include data items such as user names, locations, interests, photos and uploads.
References
Friedman, J. (2013). Job Networking Through Social Media: The Advantages of LinkedIn for
Roberts, M. & Zahay, D. (2012). Chapter 10: Lead Generation and Conversion. Internet
Marketing: Integrating Online and Offline Strategies, 3rd Ed. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
Waldman, J. (2013). 10 Ways the Job Search Has Changed. Forbes. Retrieved from
http://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2013/07/02/10-ways-the-job-search-has- changed/
