By Patrick Rowan, Partner – Executive Search
Social media has become our prime source of fast-breaking news, content, collaboration and connection with others, and a necessary tool when conducting a job search. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, Tumblr, Discord, Pinterest, and LinkedIn are some of the most popular social media sites. Launched in 2004, Facebook has 2.9 billion active users, YouTube (2005) has more than 2.5 billion users, and Twitter (2006) has over 330 million. LinkedIn has 830 million members worldwide and is the standard for professional networking, recruiting, and job hunting. It’s never been easier to find and connect with high-ranking decision-makers.
But as easy and fun as social media is to use, it can be fast-moving, rapidly changing, and uncontrollable, and you must use it carefully and strategically, particularly when you are job-hunting. Corporate recruiters and hiring managers will search for you on popular social media before inviting you for an interview. You may think that this is intrusive and that your social media posts are your own business, but employers are just minimizing their risk. Social media screening is now routine, and you may be asked for your social media accounts in the interview process. That means every tweet, TikTok, and YouTube video you’ve ever shared or posted will be there for employers to enjoy and possibly judge. To be prepared, here are some suggestions:
Google Your Name. Google yourself to see what recruiters see. If you find any inappropriate posts or photos from your social media accounts, remove them, or change your privacy settings. Hopefully, Google finds positive items, but if there are negative posts from online media sources that you can’t control, it’s better to be aware of it now and have an explanation ready.
Have Fewer Accounts. You don’t need to deactivate your accounts – employers want you to have a social media presence, so they can learn more about you. But if you try to maintain too many, you will find it too hard to keep up with. Choose a few social media sites, with LinkedIn as your primary account. Confirm that your contact information is correct, post a professional-looking photo, and make sure that your LinkedIn profile matches the details on your resume. Choose two other social media sites and link them all together. If you have multiple LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook accounts that you haven’t posted on in years, delete them.
Scrub Your Accounts. On LinkedIn, keep your employment history, location, and professional skills public, and review your photos and posts on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Employers will be looking for offensive, unusual, or controversial content – anger, aggression, threats, depictions of violence, racism, homophobia, intimate or suggestive photos, extreme political or religious beliefs, alignment with controversial groups and associations, connections with questionable characters, and just outright bad behaviour. Ask your friends and family for their opinions – something that you might consider mild and harmless might be the exact opposite of others.
Get Creative. Social media is for selling, and you are the product. There are plenty of tools available online to help create a polished, professional, and exciting social media presence, and now is the time to put them to good use. If you are bold, you can post an “audition tape” or host a webinar on YouTube and Instagram to allow employers to meet you in advance. If that seems like too much for you, load your accounts with posts that demonstrate your knowledge, join or start Twitter chats and LinkedIn groups that relate to your profession, and post professional content to attract attention and demonstrate your brilliance.
Used wisely, social media could be the best thing that ever happened to your job search. Invest some time in your social media now and you will build confidence, learn some tech skills, get accustomed to telling your career story in new ways, and you will harvest the rewards for years to come.