Most of us use social media platforms or online forums regularly, whether it’s to stay in touch with friends, discover new media, or show off things that we are interested in.
Our online presence can give the world a picture of who we really are. However, this picture can be good or bad, and accurate or inaccurate. It can also affect our career prospects, positively or negatively.
Maintaining an employer-friendly online presence is essential for preserving your professional reputation and improving your chances of career success. Here are some tips to help you achieve this.
Optimize Your Profiles
As shown in ExpressVPN’s blog piece, around 70% of hiring managers have successfully hired recruits through social media platforms. This isn’t just limited to “professional” platforms like LinkedIn either — hiring managers, and potential employers will often search for a candidate’s name and check out their social media profiles.
If you want to specifically appeal to potential employers, LinkedIn is a great place to show off your career achievements and prospects. There are also apps like Twitter/X and TikTok, which are used by many as places for fun and jokes, and by many others as ways of showcasing who they are and “selling themselves” to the world. Decide which approach you want for each of your online profiles.
While many people have landed jobs and opportunities due to their online presence, many others have missed out on or lost jobs because of them. Avoid sharing anything that could be considered offensive or controversial, or indicate that you may be a bad hire (for example, it’s always best to avoid publicly criticizing current or past employers online).
Keep the Personal Private
Of course, not everybody wants to use social media and the internet purely to build or maintain a professional reputation. According to Statista, the most popular reason to use social media is to keep in touch with friends or family.
Many of us enjoy using it simply for fun and even to share jokes and banter with friends that may not be compatible with appealing to employers. There’s nothing wrong with this — after all, the internet would be a dull place if every post or piece of content was designed to appeal to bosses and hiring managers!
Letting your true, unfiltered personality shine online is no problem — but you may need to limit its reach to your friends and family. If you don’t feel like deciding whether every post or interaction is employer-friendly before you share them, there’s a simple fix: use your privacy settings
Facebook and all other popular social media sites have settings that can limit your posts and activity only to friends on that platform. Experian’s blog describes many of the other benefits of applying privacy settings. Applying these settings means that strangers, bosses, and hiring managers can’t read your posts (unless you’ve added them as friends, of course).
Final Words
Although social media platforms and websites vary in their uses and target audiences, it’s always a good idea to make sure that your online presence represents the best of who you are rather than the worst. In addition to affecting our career prospects, our online presence can affect how other people in general see us.
It’s always good to understand how to optimize your online presence and how to limit it where needed. One common method is to have publicly accessible accounts on professional sites like LinkedIn while keeping our more personal accounts on sites like Instagram and Facebook private. If you’re not sure what your public online presence looks like, a good first step is to Google your name and location to see what comes up!
This content was provided by a third party.
