Hello monkeys, as you all know, in the 21st century, online presence becomes increasingly important and statistics show that “almost 98% of all recruiters would Google you before signing you”. Here’s what you should do to prepare your social media for background checks and interviews:
1. Build your LinkedIn Profile
I think this goes without saying. LinkedIn is the only professional social media website out there, filled with recruiters and talent acquisition managers. In fact, just recently a recruiter messaged and fast-tracked me to the interview round of her company simply because I did my homework.
Fill your experiences, educations, publications, awards honestly and avoid the usual, boring adjectives. Keep it concise so you can talk more about it in your interview!
Tailor your profile to suit the industry you’re entering. For example, if you’re going to apply for Consulting, make sure that pro-bono consulting you did last Spring shines and not the service trip to Africa! (You can rearrange the order of components in LinkedIn).
Make connections. You instantly become more credible with 500+ connections. (But don’t just randomly connect with people) Tell other people to write recommendations, work in group projects with them and bust your ass off. You never know, recruiters have extensive networks that may include the people you’ve worked with, and you certainly don’t want to be on their bad side when the recruiters give them a call.
Pro Tip: Write articles about what you’re interested in. You never know how far they can go. Quality content will make people look twice – make your article stand out with high-quality content that people will want to come back and read more or recommend to their friends.
Anecdote: A friend of mine really liked to analyze stocks and often published his results on his LinkedIn profile. It was shared around in his university and eventually reached the feed of a big-name company. He was contacted immediately by a senior and got a job there.
Last but not least, GET A GOOD PROFILE PICTURE.
2. Clean up your Facebook Profile
That picture of you getting stoned? Delete it, untag yourself from it. No one wants to see that. Or at least hide it.
The status you made when your wife cheated on you? DELETE IT.
Take some time off your weekend to actually clean up your profile, or at least just make it visible to your friends. Make sure the only thing that recruiters can see when they google you is your bio, profile picture, and your cover photo. Don’t forget to make yourself look presentable (Silver Bananas for amazing cover photos)
Leave any Facebook groups/fan pages, remove followers that might undermine your image.
Set up privacy settings. Unless you set appropriate privacy settings and limit who has access to your accounts/information your social network page will come up on a web search.
Pro Tip: In case you don’t want to let go of your memories yet, Facebook has the feature to hide your past activity from your friends. Use it.
3. Always, always post professionally
Yes, I know you hate Trump but always make sure to keep this to yourself (or at least post anonymously!) This can be an easy way to get yourself screened out, or even fired. Online posts get around really quickly, and once you get something on the Internet, you know damn well there’s no way to delete it.
Don’t assume that your comments won’t be seen by people outside your network – social media sites are designed for sharing, you just never know when a friend-of-a-friend may also be a friend-of-the-boss. You can’t control what other people will do with your information.
Feel free to add more :-)
Credits: Your online presence
