Clean up your Social Media Feed before you start interviewing
When it comes to job interviews today, there’s a little more you need to prepare for than just the interview. You may think it won’t matter, but cleaning up your feed on social media is a must before you start interviewing. Employers have the ability to now look at the personal lives of those that they are choosing to employ and the last thing you want is to have your chance of landing your dream job destroyed by what you happen to have floating around on social media.
However, it’s really easy to clean up your social media feed, if you follow these steps below, you can have your feed looking its best and you might even impress some employers with it as well.
Pay Attention to your status updates and comments
We all know that trolling and profanity are widely spread on the internet – but employers are not going to be impressed by it. Equally, any complaining about former employers or your current job is not something that will go over well either. There are several things that will cause red flags in the minds of employers such as sexist, racist or other comments that might be consider discriminatory – even if you’ve posted them as a joke – these are the kinds of things you’ll want to look through and get rid of and refrain from posting whilst you’re going through the interview process.
Censor your photos
Those photos you have from the time you and your friends got really drunk and climbed the statue in the center of town, and the police had to be called to get you down from it – they’re the kind of photos you’re going to want to take down. Any photos that feature reckless or lewd behavior are photos that will make employers think twice about hiring you or even colleges and universities accepting you. Any photos that show drug use, drunken behavior, nudity (full or partial), acts of vandalism or other illegal activities are going to only hinder your chances of getting ahead.
Check your profile
Look at the groups that you are a member of on Facebook, as your employers can see them too, you’re not necessarily going to want them to see that you are a member of any groups that might be considered sexist, racist or discriminatory in anyway. Equally if you’ve listed drugs and alcohol as your major interests then it’s not going to make the best impression on prospective employers.
Set your Facebook account and your albums to private
You can’t make everything you’ve posted on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr or Pinterest private, but you can heavily restrict what your potential employers can look at on your Facebook feed. You can stop people being able to add you as a friend without sending you a message first; you can restrict what people who aren’t on your friends list can see from your profile and your photo albums. Facebook has privacy settings that you can apply even when you post to other people’s walls you can choose who can see things and who can’t. If you really want to you can stop people posting on your wall.
There are lots of things to consider when you are looking at your social media feed, and it can sometimes be hard to know what to remove and what to leave up – after all if you’re applying to work at a legal firm for human rights, you might want to leave up the photos from the protests you attended to free political prisoners on foreign soil – if you’re really struggling, the best thing to do is ask an older family member like parents or aunts or uncles to take a look at your social media feeds and if you’re too embarrassed to have them see what’s on there, it probably needs to be taken down.
