Should You Keep Your Social Media Accounts Public When Looking for a New Job?
Social media has long since proven itself to have a bigger utility than posting pictures of dogs and following celebrities, and also a bigger influence in our ‘’offline’’ lives if such a distinction still even exists in our day and age. Few things can be more powerful of a self-promotional tool than social media, as recruiters are turning to websites such as Facebook and Instagram to seek fresh blood for their companies.
According to an article published by Career Builder, 37 % of companies have made hires using social media websites, a number high enough to make any sensible person whip out their phones and delete all video and photo evidence of their drunken shenanigans. Speaking of which, at this point in our conversation, you are probably wondering if and how you should curate your social media profiles to make a good impression on potential employers. Fortunately for everybody involved, we have a few suggestions in this sense.
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Have A Complete and Relevant Profile
As ambiguous as this might sound, having a complete and relevant profile is ideal if you want companies to turn to your social media portals for recruitments. If you are using Linkedin, for example, make sure your profile is filled with all the relevant information necessary to attract legitimate employers – complete employment history, education, and any skills related to your job, and do not forget to include a pretty headshot for good measure. Try to think through the eyes of a recruiter and the fact that they go through literally hundreds of resumes each year. Plus, there is nothing more frustrating than eyeing a resume and finding out that it is a half-written mess filled with irrelevant information.
Upload A Quality Photo of Yourself
If you are like everybody else, you might be tempted to upload a decent selfie of yourself on your Linkedin profile and call it a day. As subjective as this concept might be (the concept of a decent photo), as long as it looks slightly professional (and no, a background featuring Disneyland rides does not count), recruiters will appreciate the effort that you have put into the creation of your profile and take it into account. Nobody is saying you should dress like those people in 1850’s family photographs – sporting a business casual attire should suffice.
Keep Your Social Media Profiles Professional
Remember the drunken shenanigans we have mentioned during the introduction? Truth be told, nothing is truly private on the internet in our day and age. No matter how careful you are, some personal information (damning or not) will slip through the cracks. While there is nothing much you can do about this, what you can do is curate the personal information as much as possible.
What we mean here is you should strike a balance between pictures of you taking shots with your friends from four years ago when you were still in college, and photos of yourself in less-damning (in the eyes of recruiters, at least) situations. Or, at the very least, try to keep said photos under intense scrutiny, in friend-only security settings.
Highlight the Skills That You Know Will Attract Employers
When it comes to your career history, you should be very wary about what to include in your profiles and what to highlight. Recruiters do not need to know about how your organized the office fantasy football competition (or maybe they do, maybe they have watched The League and are big fans). Instead of adding skills and accomplishments that are unrelated to your career, try putting an emphasis on the goals that you have met, and prove them with real examples. For examples, ‘’I have delivered x deadline in y ahead of schedule’’, or ‘’By doing x task, I have eliminated y micromanagement issue for the company and improved efficiency’’.
Keep your Connections Focused on Your Career
Getting requests from your old roommate from college or buddies from high school is to be expected on every social media portal, but when it comes to Linkedin, you want to make sure that the majority of your connections are either in your career cohort, or at least professionals from a wide variety of fields. This will give potential employers the impression that you have your ‘’ear to the ground’’ and that you are constantly connected to your niche, and will become very helpful if you are applying for a job that requires you have an extensive network of contacts or is focused on good old–fashioned networking (as much as we dread it).
Make sure To Update Your Profile Frequently
If you have already made the effort of signing up to multiple social media platform, do not just let them collect dust. Staying active and engaged on all the social media sites you have joined is key if you want to attract the attention of employers. Nailed a new job? Update the profile. Got a promotion? Upload the new title. Finished a Master’s Degree in Arts and Crafts? Post that update as well. If you hold an important role in a particular company, you do not want a profile that says you still work at that shady McDonald’s near your college campus. Plus, updating your profile when ‘’required’’ will show recruiters that you care about your reputation and online presence.
Join Career-Specific Groups
As obnoxious and annoying as it might be, social media is virtually brimming of great groups that can connect you with job seekers and offer industry-specific information. If you work in marketing, for example, join groups catered specifically toward this niche. If you work in a more creative field (graphic design, content writing and so on and so forth), join online groups created for these jobs.
Remember that the groups that you have joined are visible somewhere on your Facebook profile, so try to keep communities dedicated to cat videos and dogs in unusual situations to a minimum. Nobody is saying you should keep your social media profiles focused solely on your career (we are not robots, after all), but it is still a factor worth considering. The last thing you want is recruiters judging your skills and value based on you frequenting groups dedicated to edgy and nihilistic memes.
Conclusion
If you are wondering whether or not you should keep your social media profiles open while looking for a job, the short answer is yes. The long answer, on the other hand, is more complicated than that. You should keep it open, but take great care on which personality quirks and interests slip through the cracks, and maintain them as professional looking as possible. Nobody is saying you should inhibit every facet of your personality, but keep in mind that the recruiter will see only what is on the surface and may not have the opportunity to get to know the real you.
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