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Remove that drunk photo from Facebook: First impressions count
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According to a recent CareerBuilder.com survey, one-in-five employers use social networking sites to research potential employees. One-third (34 percent) reported they found content that caused them to dismiss the candidate from consideration. On the other hand, nearly one-in-four (24 percent) said they found content that helped solidify their decision to hire a candidate. What does your online identity say about you?
The CareerBuilder.com survey found the top five mistakes candidates make include:
- Posting information about drinking or using drugs (41 percent)
- Posting provocative or inappropriate photographs or information (40 percent)
- Poor communication skills (29 percent)
- Bad-mouthing a previous employer or fellow employee (28 percent)
- Lying about qualifications (27 percent)
So how can you clean up (and keep clean) your online presence?
1. Control access. “Consider setting your profile to ‘private,’ so only designated friends can view it,” said Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources at CareerBuilder.com.
2. Remove information that indicates you may not be appropriate for a particular organization. “Keep your political, religious and social views to yourself unless they are so strong you truly would never work for a company that does not support your viewpoint,” said Mary M. Willoughby, SPHR, director of human resources at the Center for Disability Rights, Inc.
3. Wash over it or wait it out. “If removing negative content is not possible, which it often isn’t, you can try to wash over it by getting a lot of positive online press in major blogs or sites. These hits should pile on top of the older ones, and since many people won’t go back more than the first couple pages of a search, your negative hits are less likely to be seen. Or, you might just wait it out. If you are someone who is very active online and already ‘out there’ on cyberspace, and if the negative hits are not particularly damaging, you can just wait it out and assume that any older unfavorable information will be covered up pretty quickly by new online content without taking any action,” said Diane Crompton and Ellen Sautter, co-authors of “Seven Days to Online Networking.”
4. Don’t provide compromising information in the first place. “Think of the Internet as in public and with an incredible reach and long memory,” said Andy Greider, brand manager at QAlias. “When you hit send, post, save or go, you are placing a permanent record of what you say and do out there. It is far easier, and less expensive, to keep the slate clean than to try and scrub bad press off the Internet.”
5. Stay on-brand. “Take down every picture, group, application, etc. that is off-brand. Of course, feel free to express yourself...just do it somewhere else,” said Jason Alba, CEO of JibberJobber.com, author of “I’m on LinkedIn -- Now What???” and co-author of “I’m on Facebook -- Now What???”
Willy Franzen, founder of One Day, One Job and One Day, One Internship, adds, “Use Google alerts to monitor your online personal brand.”
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