When you go to a school that is in the city, most of the students that you come across are either carrying a BlackBerry or iPhone on them. I also happen to be one of them. Let’s get this straight, though, I am not a big fan of either – I think they’re overhyped and that there are other phones that are equally as good but are just not given the North American attention (head on over to Europe and Asia to see some real phones in action). But hey, that’s not the discussion on hand; what is, though, is the wonderment of why more and more undergraduates are possessing one or the other and for what possible advantage points are there?

It’s quite simple: email and constant contact. We’re often told that in the working world, the right opportunity is everything, as is timing. And such could explain why many business persons have a BlackBerry as an appendage – it’s great at its email function (heck, it’s what put RIM in the game) and the BlackBerry messenger is a huge selling point when traveling between continents. Well, when you’re taught to seize opportunities and to live for them, there’s no time to be texting your roommate to check if you ever got that offer for an interview or if they could doublecheck where your meeting was. It helps us prepare and serves as a back-up when “we forget” things. And hey, when you are usually a user of either the BlackBerry or the iPhone, you’re usually pretty apt to the other social media tools that are ready for download to the phone, such as Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube.

The downside to this tool, though, is its possibility as a distraction. Walk by the cubicle of many young adults at work or at their internships, and you often find them twittering about their job, browsing Facebook because they can’t on their work computer, or simply chatting away on instant messaging programs. Or worse, the one that constantly checks and replies to other emails. As much as a BlackBerry can enhance your job search, it can just as easily cost you a job.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 5th, 2010 at 10:00 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.