There was a great article on Forbes.com recently about how your social media profiles can effect whether you get hired, or even get interviewed, for a new job. This is important to think about all the time if you’re seeking a racing job or any career – how will a future employer view the information that’s public; and that is everything on the internet. One thing that I like about this article is that it does NOT advise people to create two profiles – one professional and one personal – because not only is that dishonest, it’s also unreasonable to manage. Here’s the full article, taken from Forbes.com. You can read the original article here.
How Your Social Media Profile Could Make Or Break Your Next Job Opportunity
By Lisa Quast
My husband and I have trained our three daughters on the importance of posting only appropriate information on any type of social media. This includes not posting certain pictures of Saturday night’s party on Facebook and not posting or Tweeting anything when they’re angry or in a bad mood. Now, managing your social media profile has become even more important – a 2012 survey demonstrates that your social media profile could make or break your chances of being hired.
According to the 2012 annual technology market survey conducted by Eurocom Worldwide, “Almost one in five technology industry executives say that a candidate’s social media profile has caused them not to hire that person.” Previous Eurocom Worldwide surveys had found almost 40% of the survey respondents from technology companies review job candidate’s profiles on social media sites.
While we’ve all heard about the increase in companies checking the social media profiles of job candidates, this survey provides the first evidence that prospective job candidates are actually being rejected because of their profiles.
(Update: According to Forbes.com blog reader Jennie van Luptak, “creating dual professional/personal Facebook accounts is a serious violation of Facebook’s terms of service that could get you banned.” If you are worried about what potential employers might see, Jennie recommends you “segment your friends using lists” because it allows you to “control who sees what – your supervisor gets to see the interesting news story you shared but not the pictures from last weekend.”)
LinkedIn: Better for job seekers than Facebook is LinkedIn because you can create a highly professional profile by using LinkedIn as an electronic résumé. This includes writing a succinct profile summary, adding your current job information, past job experience, education, skills, awards, and even obtaining testimonials from previous managers, co-workers, or direct reports. If you author a blog that relates to business or your work, be sure to include the URL information. Then, you can encourage potential employers to review your information on LinkedIn.
With more and more companies jumping on the social media bandwagon, it only makes sense that searching social media for background information on potential job candidates will continue to grow. This will make it even more important that everyone actively manage his or her online persona.
Bottom line: Decide how you intend to use social media and to whom you will allow access (especially on Facebook). Remember, if you want to ensure a potential employer never rejects you, make sure your online social profile depicts the type of employee a company would want to hire.
