Be Careful with your Social Media!

From our Careers Manager – Mary McGlynn.

You need to be careful what you post on your social media.

From doing lots of research myself when organising interviews or work placements for students, employers have stated to me on many occasions to tell our students to be very careful what they include on their social media pages. It’s a case of ‘Think First and then Post’ not ‘Post first and think later’!

As it turns out, a lot of employers will re-consider a job offer if they check the candidate’s social media accounts and find an off-putting photograph or comment.

Almost all the employers I have spoken to said that they check candidate’s social media accounts, and this includes all of them – Twitter / Facebook / Instagram etc before calling them for an interview. Even if you have a stand out CV, your social media account may let you down, so you really need to consider the kind of message you are putting across if you are job seeking or looking for a career change.

The worst thing you can do is refer to what kind of things you get up to at the weekends or profanity – this will not impress the employer at all.

You need to also look at your spelling and grammar – as this too can be held against you. It’s not very consistent to have a perfect CV and then a messy social media page so although you may think there is nothing wrong with your social media comments, look again or have someone else look at it for you.

If you are on LinkedIn, think of this as your online CV. Each section should be well worded. Spelling and grammar should be perfect, and your photo should look professional. Any volunteer work or donations to charity seems to impress employers so add these if you can.

The kind of things employers are looking for in a candidate online are – professional experience and examples of successful projects, targets, presentations etc. They also look at mutual connections so have a look for companies you are interested in and get in contact with some of the people there and add every company you have ever worked for. LinkedIn is used by some recruitment companies for the entire recruitment process including sourcing candidates, contacting and vetting before interview so make sure your LinkedIn page looks impressive and make employers want to contact you.

No matter what the platform, don’t post anything which may put the employer off and try to maintain and keep up to date with your social media accounts.