Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Don't Facebook Yourself Out of a Job

"I'm trying to keep this on the down low, but ..."

So started a post from one of my Facebook connections. He thought of it as a private conversation between him and a friend. Unfortunately, he broadcast it to everyone connected to either of them.

Never, ever, ever, and I mean ever post something on Facebook, MySpace, etc. that you don't want everyone to know. Especially prospective employers.

I've written on the career dangers of this before. Just about anyone who is in a hiring position (within our industry anyway) is on Facebook and all the other social network sites. And they will check your page out. Do you feel comfortable with what they'll read or see?

Visit your own page with the mindset of a potential employer. Would you hire you based on your page?

Clean it up. Delete embarrassing photos (and remove tags from other people's photos). Remove unflattering comments. Rework you profile page. Start over if necessary. If they don't like what they see, this may be the only "contact" you have with them.

And making your page private will not solve your problems. There are easy ways around that.

Don't miss out on a great opportunity because you think your social pages are private. They're not.


3 comments:

Hudson said...

You mean all those drunk pictures of me aren't appealing? Kidding, not my style.

Good post.

heids said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Kevin -- Good advice, and something we've all heard before. Faux pas like this also happen via Twitter, and not just when you're LOOKING for a job. I love the one about the CD who just landed in his client's fly-over town and tweeted to the world that he could never live there and something about it being a "dump." By the time he'd gotten to their offices, he had some serious apologizing to attend to before they got down to business.

If it goes online, it might as well be on the front page of the NY Times...

Buckley