Interview Tips >Should Candidates Have Social Media Profiles?
Employers review hundreds of resumes before they decide to call you in for a job interview. Something about your resume stood out from the pack, and the company decided that you were someone that earned a shot at winning the position. Once they have made that decision, the company calls you and schedules an interview.
It is between now and then that you are most in danger of making a bad first impression. How? By providing access to a social media profile that does not give employers a positive reaction.
Most Graduate Social Media Profiles
Social media websites like Facebook and MySpace are designed to be places for you to connect with your friends and share your personal experiences. That is why many younger men and women post photos of themselves having fun with their friends – going out drinking, showing off their newest bathing suit, or simply making awkward faces at the camera.
Despite the basic privacy settings on these websites, your profiles are made public. Between now and your job interview, the employer is going to be preparing questions and trying to learn more about you as a candidate. One of the first things they are going to do is search for your name and see what comes up. What they will see is a profile of you complete with misspellings, unprofessional photos, and status updates/blog posts that rant about your personal life. These are going to immediately cast you in a negative light, and though they will likely not cancel your interview, they are going to be judging you with increased skepticism.
What Can You Do?
There are ways for you to manage your social media profiles in order to make them less accessible to employers and prying eyes. You should enact these changes long in advance of your interview to ensure that they go into effect right away. You do not need to delete your social media accounts, but you will need to make some massive changes in order to ensure that your profiles are not going to harm your interview. We will discuss how to prepare your social media profiles in the next two blog posts.
Take Away Interview Tips:
- Prepare your social media profiles long before the interview.
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Interesting, but what if you have nothing to hide? I’ve always held my Facebook profile to a standard of being perfectly acceptable to show anyone, in any situation. Nothing off-color, nothing incriminating, nothing I wouldn’t say or do in front of Mother Theresa.
Wouldn’t a positive profile be a positive factor?
This is an excellent question, but I think the answer is still no. First of all, you always want to make a first impression in person. You never want anyone looking at your photo (or even a photo of a dog or a flower) and trying to figure out who you are. The longer they have to think about you without meeting you, the more they’re going to formulate an opinion even without meeting you. Secondly, impressions can made from a variety of places. If a lot of your friends have an unprofessional photo, it could sway opinions. If you’ve “liked” something that the person doesn’t like, it can sway opinions. You never really know what makes a difference and what doesn’t. It’s even possible that simply looking at your picture and finding out you are attractive/unattractive/young/old/married/single, etc., can all change someone’s thoughts about you without them even realizing it.
I would agree that a perfect profile is unlikely to cause harm, but it certainly isn’t valuable, and I don’t really think there is a scenario where something as simple as a Facebook profile will help someone get a job. When something is unlikely to help you and possibly can harm you, it’s always a good idea to err on the side of caution.
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