Posted By: Staff Editor In: Business Professional As the amount of personal information available online to potential employers increases every second, candidates these days are making first impressions on employers long before they even show up for the interview.
As the amount of personal information available online to potential employers increases every second, candidates these days are making first impressions on employers long before they even show up for the interview.
No longer are sites like MySpace and Facebook just for college students posting their inappropriate pictures from the previous weekend, these sites now appeal to a different demographic—recruiters and employers looking to learn more about candidates they’re considering for employment.
More than 12,500 business professionals across the Beyond.com Network of thousands of industry and geographic-specific sites participated in a poll that asked if business professionals are concerned about employers seeing their Facebook or MySpace pages. Surprisingly, about 18 percent of respondents are confident in employers finding them online and actually use these sites as a resource for promoting themselves to employers.
Even more surprising is that over 40% of professionals that participated in this poll don’t even have a social networking page. But, social networking sites continue to grow and more and more people are creating a presence on the web for personal or professional purposes than ever before.
Who Uses Social Networking Sites
When first introduced, sites like MySpace or Facebook were mainly utilized by high school and college students, but now the business professional crowd has quickly entered that space. According to msnbc.com, more than 41 percent of Facebook users are over the age of 35 and social networking is no longer seen as an evil of the job search world, but rather a professional networking tool. But, it is important to remember that when participating in these sites, you are creating an online image that should be carefully managed in order to be sure you are making a good impression on your site visitors, especially those who may be looking to hire you.
How to Create a Positive and Professional Online Image
If you do not have a social networking page and are looking to create one, there are a lot of options available to you: Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, a personal blog, or even an Online Career Portfolio. These are all viable options to showcase your resume and other relevant career-related information that will give employers an opportunity to learn more about you online.
When creating or modifying your profile on any of these sites, it is important to follow these easy steps to stay professional and create a professional online image:
Avoid Unprofessional Content and Pictures – Be sure that you are presenting yourself in the best possible light by avoiding unprofessional content and pictures. Remember that site users will not only be able to see what you post about yourself but they will also be able to see what friends post about you and vice versa. Remember to pay attention to tagged photos and content that you did not necessarily post, but can be linked back to you and be potentially damaging.
Choose Your Friends Wisely – When accepting to link your page to a friend’s page, exercise caution and make good decisions. To keep your page professional, make sure you have chosen to associate with friends who also maintain a professional online image and monitor their sites closely on occasion to avoid any surprises.
Update Your Profile Regularly – Maintain control over new information that is posted to your site. It’s important to monitor and update your profile on a regular basis to catch anything that can be seen as incriminating. Plus, when you’re scrubbing your page and links for inappropriate content you can take the time to update and highlight your latest professional accomplishments. Include links to your updated online career portfolio to showcase your work experiences and accomplishments.
Google yourself – After you have created your social networking page, type your name into a Google search to find out what employers might see when searching for your name, email address, screen name, and phone number. If you find information that can be used against you, find out how you can combat that digital dirt with services like Reputation Defender.
Change Your Privacy Settings – Did you find too much potentially damaging information on your social networking page that you cannot remove or your friends insist on posting inappropriate messages? Consider setting your pages to private. There are different levels of privacy you can select from as well, so when in doubt be conservative. When employers search for you, they will most likely able to see your profile picture despite the settings of your page, so be sure that that this image is “employer friendly.”
Remember, it can take hours to put together the perfect resume, prepare for an interview, and impress a potential employer but it can take only seconds to blow your chances of landing that great job. Don’t let a simple thing like an inappropriate webpage, blog posting, or image hurt your chances of getting hired. Use your social networking page to your advantage throughout your job search by following the simple tips above. For more career-related tips and resources, please visit our Career Resource Center .
Content for this article provided by The Beyond.com Network
Comments
Posted by: maguro_01
Personal information and pictures, especially, are illegal for prospective employers to require. It was required years ago and eliminating that requirement was actually hard-won progress. A few jobs (like modeling) need appearance data. True, a huge nose ring and florescent orange hair could be a deal breaker if you want to sell Rolls-Royces in Connecticut. But for most jobs a picture is irrelevant. So is your ethnicity, race, age, and so on which is what pictures are for. Why empower businesses that think otherwise? Why allow them invisibility? Whoever you are, you are helping to set the stage for the next generation as well as yourself the next time you look for a job. If someone thinks they get an edge in one situation, they will seriously lose in another. We may make friends at work, but that's not why we go there. We need some sort of social contract at work so we can work well with others we might not be friendly with otherwise. We do best for ourselves if our work and the team's work is excellent. Perhaps for some people work and life completely overlap. That adds a burden to the non-productive parts of the workplace that it can't bear. Hanging out at work should be discouraged since it does lead to people hiring prospective friends or fellow community members instead of the strongest co-workers. Let's not go back to the bad old days. It should be possible to pull pictures when looking for a job, though that may make pulling the pictures a sign of a job search. Perhaps networking sites can be asked or required to make pictures private as a setting, but people must be able to pull the pictures and leave the rest of their site private.
Posted by: SWozniak
Margo mentions age. The big bugaboo. I am 61. I look 51. However, I have not had an interview for a "real," ie, full-time or supportive, job since 2001 when I was 54.First, before someone insults my intelligence, yes, I have revised my resumes frequently and I currently have four: one each for writing, teaching, administration and working in academia. The administration resume eliminates my graduate work.I have no dates on my resume but I do list the number of years that I worked at each job. As you might imagine, some of my experience is very old but that does not mean it is no longer valuable.I almost never discuss the years I spent in retail. To me, it is work totally lacking in transferrable skills.
Posted by: jim
Talk about rambling on maguro_01On........I think the site provided me with some interesting options that I had not thought of before. I, as well, thought myspace was just a kids forum.
Posted by: Dusten
Unfortunately, there is no easy way to prove the reason a person was not hired. In other words, if an employer considers hiring you and visits your myspace or facebook, then decides not to hire you. There is no requirement that they disclose the true reason you were not hired. You can't hide everything since so much information is freely available. The only thing you can do is what I call "due diligence", meaning you be as truthful as possible without disclosing things too negative. Some experts even suggest you leave political party affiliations off these publicly available websites. The problem is that most people use these sites for that exact reason...to express themselves, as an outlet for their personal feelings and views.
Posted by: a smart cookie
Aha! I told my friends all this 3 years ago. I am 45 and I LOVE MySpace. But I am there for fun, not business...therefore, I don't use any portion of my name as a screen name, use my screen name as my registered name, do not post my pic on my main page and use an email address that NO ONE has. Viola. Problem solved. And I have yet to be contacted by any high school friends or relatives; so I am quite confident that a prospective employer would not.Further, I think it is the height of laziness for a recruiter to base an opinion of an interviewee before even talking to her/him. Online representation/interaction will never replace the "real deal". And if it does...we are ALL in a world of hurt.
