Got a Facebook, Bebo or Twitter account? Send an employer your CV and it’s possible they’ll do a search for you on all of those sites.
If you use social media as a way to promote yourself professionally, then it’s common sense to make sure that anything you share is suitably professional. For most of us, though, social media isn’t professional, it’s personal – a space in which to socialise with friends, upload embarrassing photos and share the occasional rant.
But just as you wouldn’t turn up to an interview drunk and start swearing your head off about how much you hate public transport, you don’t want to accidentally give employers a poor impression if they come across your Facebook page.
To ensure that photo or that status update doesn’t ruin your career prospects we’ve put together a list of social media pointers.
1. Check your privacy settings
Make sure you’ve checked the privacy settings for every one of your social media accounts. Be careful, Facebook has both a general privacy section and an audience selector for each bit of your profile and every one of your photo albums. Make sure the audience for everything is set to ‘friends’.
2. Don’t mention your employer
Protecting your privacy on social media isn’t just an issue when you’re job-seeking. It’s important to make absolutely sure that nothing you say or do on Facebook could get you fired from your current job. If you include the name of the company you work for in your profile information, anything you say could potentially be associated with the company.
3. Create a list
While it’s probably a smart move not to add your boss on Facebook, it may be hard to avoid adding other work colleagues. However, you can put all those colleagues on a separate list, so they only see those photos and status updates that you deem ‘safe for work’.
4. Use common sense
At the end of the day, the best way to avoid career suicide is to use your common sense. Before posting anything online, ask yourself, ‘could this get me fired?’ or ‘could this lose me a job interview’ and you should be fine.
Are you keen to use social media to find a job? My World of Work is looking for someone to take part in a challenge to find job opportunities through social media. If you’d like to apply then email myworldofwork@sds.co.uk.
