What does your social media profile say about you?
This article contains social media tips and tricks, and how to ensure a google search cannot incriminate you
At the moment we are in an information age. The internet is a vast database of information—a name is all you need to find out personal details of almost anyone. This means that when you come to apply for jobs, employers can relatively easily find your social media profile amongst the countless others, just using your name.
Contrary to what you may think, the information they see is largely decided by you. Do you want potential employers to see that picture of you with a cone on your head, passed out in the middle of concert square? Do you want them to see your less than affectionate comments towards people on the internet that disagree with you about one matter or another? Perhaps not. Here are a few tips and tricks that you can use to make sure your social media presence won't go against you when employers hit that search button.
1. Security settings are limited
Security settings are incredibly important, and it is always wise to have them at maximum level for a site like Facebook which has such personal information about your life (however lovely or incriminating). And whilst these settings can can help you out a lot, they rely on the searcher not being friends with you. However, what if you and your to-be-boss share a friend? Through this, he may be able to view your full profile on their account, which pretty much negates security. A very useful and common thing to do to help keep employers away is to change your surname on Facebook (perhaps to your middle name), so that searching for you is made significantly more difficult.
2. When in doubt, google yourself
One thing you can do if you are worried about employers looking you up is to google your name and see what comes up first. Ideally, you will have your professional social media profile come up first—for example your LinkedIn, or even your twitter profile, if you have kept it PG. It will always be best for them to look at your LinkedIn, so this needs to be the most accessible. If the first few results show your photos from your mate's stag do, then maybe you should consider removing them or making the necessary alterations.
3. If you can, change your presence to make it positive
Instead of trying to elude them, why not show your potential employers how positive and interesting you are. If you are applying for work or projects in particular areas of science, are you tweeting about the current trends in the field? Interacting with others in a positive way, to inform or discuss issues will look excellent, and really show your enthusiasm towards whatever it is you are doing.
5. Keep your professional social media profile up to date
LinkedIn is an excellent tool to use if you keep it up to date and fresh. Make sure you connect to the right people, fill everything out, and use it to interact with noteworthy people in your field if you can. If you want more tips on how to use LinkedIn specifically, then read our LinkedIn guide.
To summarise: just remember that the power is still in your hands—you can try to completely remove yourself from the web, however a better option might to be to embrace it. Make everything you do on your public and professional profiles positive, and then just try to mitigate the negative content and interactions coming from your personal profiles. Remember that when something is on the internet, there is no guarantee it will ever leave.