Do You Have Social Media Skeletons In Your Closet?
Engineering Career Blog
Do You Have Social Media Skeletons In Your Closet?
Engineering Career Blog
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Do You Have Social Media Skeletons In Your Closet?
Written by Diane Karch-Osowski on May 25th 2021
Are The Skeletons In Your Social Media Closet Bringing You Down?
In this post, I want to talk about the importance of cleaning up your social media, especially when you're going through the job search process. This is one of the things that I think a lot of people are forgetting to take a look at.
People naturally think about their resume, they think about their cover letter, they even look at maybe LinkedIn, but they tend to forget some of the things they may have posted on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and the like.
Hiring Managers Absolutely Google Potential Employees
I want to talk about why this is important from the perspective of the person or people doing the hiring. The hiring team absolutely looks at online profiles when they google you.
I know when I’m hiring people I find some really exciting and positive things out there, such as people volunteering to help their community. On the flip side I’ve also seen other things, not as flattering, mainly on Facebook where they've posted stuff during college years, and it's not necessarily the best image to put forth to a future employer.
Avoid A Negative First Impression
There was this one candidate, he had his profile open to the public so anybody could see it, and in one of his posts, and actually a couple of his posts, it was bragging about how much he enjoyed getting high. Not the best thing to put out there, because many employers do have drug use policy.
Think to yourself, is that what you want your potential employers seeing and making a snap judgment of you at that moment? So you may want to rethink what you have out there and clean it up and take some stuff down.
Bonus Tip: Social Media Can Affect You Personally Too
It is interesting how social media can come back to you on different avenues. I was listening to a local radio station and they have this bit where they have local listeners call in after they've had their first date with their concerns about not getting a second date. The DJ helps to connect them with the other person to ask “Hi there, we heard you didn't follow up to have a second date, can you tell us why so we can learn more?”
On this particular morning, the lady said “Well I really didn't want to follow up and have a second date because when I got home after the date I did some looking into its Facebook account. I wanted to get to know him a little more,” and she continued, “What I found was kind of disturbing, there were comments and pictures that were degrading to women, and that really caught my attention.” As a listener of the radio show, I wondered what could he have put in his account that was so terrible?
And she went on to explain that back in college he had some pictures of some ladies in some compromising positions. What I found interesting was that your social media can even negatively affect your personal life. It's not just about people looking at you from an employment standpoint, but this lady decided not to pursue a personal relationship because of what she saw on social media.
The Takeaway...
My takeaway for you today is to clean up your social media. If not just for employment reasons it could be for your personal relationships. Take the time and don't assume. Double-check to see what you have out there and if need be, clean it up.
Until next time,
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