Start By Checking Your Settings

Privacy is important, and all reputable social media companies know that it’s partially their job to protect your privacy. That means they all provide ways for you to block at least some of your information from being available.

Should you put your social media on “private” if you’re applying for a job?

You should keep your content private. That’s very important if you have shared unprofessional content on social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and X. This typically means switching your account to “friends only”, which means only people with whom you are actually friends will see your social media posts.

Review Those Questionable Posts

Scroll through your previously posted content. Even if your content is private, it’s still important to remove any type of questionable content that could put you in a bad light. Here’s the big question. What’s questionable? Here’s a checklist to follow of content that could be viewed negatively by employers:

• Complaining about your employer. Everyone does it, but when it’s malicious and spiteful, it creates a bad taste in the mouth of your future employers.
• Illegal activities. Even if you want to talk about it, you shouldn’t. That includes illegal drug use, underage drinking, or engaging in other types of criminal activity.
• Confidentiality agreement violations. If you are sharing company secrets, trade secrets, promotional information, or any data about your current employer, that may lead to disqualification.
• Lying or misrepresenting your qualifications. Your employer can verify the information you put on your resume with that on your social media profile. That includes LinkedIn. Ensure the content matches to avoid this from causing you to lose a potential position.
• Aggressive and bullying behavior. Any evidence of cyberbullying will be a concern to employers. That may include just “joking” with a friend.
• Inappropriate photos of yourself or others. That may include photos where you’re engaging with friends in lude or otherwise unprofessional acts. If you would not show the photo to the hiring manager during an interview, hide it from being accessible on your social media account.
• Excessive complaining about – everything. Employers use social media as a way to get an idea of what you’re really like. If your posts are only negative and filled with complaints, that creates a concern for the potential employer.
• Talking poorly about previous employers. Keep conversations like this off social media as much as possible.
• Hate speech. It may be your right to have an opinion and share it as you would like to, but employers do not want to hire a person who engages in hate speech. If you are using terms or making statements that could violate a company’s policies related to racism, sexist, homophobic content, or other discriminatory actions or statements, these could be used against you in the hiring process.
• Harassment. Your social media posts should never communicate any type of harassment. Again, if you would not act or make such statements to the hiring manager, make sure they cannot see that content on your social media sites.
• Controversial group membership. If you’re a member of a group that seems to be controversial, especially those related to hate or discrimination, your employer may see that on your social media account and question your ability to keep those opinions out of the workplace.

It may sound like you can’t do a whole lot on social media and express your personal opinion. The fact is, employers face significant limitations on who they hire for numerous reasons. If they have 10 job applicants who seem equally qualified, and you’re a part of an extremist group, they will not choose you for that position. The reason? It’s simply because there is more risk in hiring you than there would be in hiring others.

What If You Don’t Want to Censor Yourself?

A social media clean-up like this is always going to help you shine in the light of an employer, but if you simply don’t want to hide who you are, don’t do so. Realize that it may impact your ability to land a job if that employer has specific feelings about those areas.

If you don’t want to share this information about yourself, also don’t want to eliminate posts and details about your past, lock down your social media pages until you find the job you desire and are hired. Keep them set to maximum privacy settings to avoid the risk of that information being exposed to others.

Being you is important on a social level. The problem is, employers want an applicant who they know isn’t going to create risk for them on the job. Make sure your social media accounts are not working against you as you apply for positions. With a bit of effort, you can protect your information and privacy.

Your social media presence is one component of a bigger picture. Make sure you’re taking the time to freshen up your account to entice employers to call you instead of causing them to pull back.