The job search used to be quite a bit simpler. You’d visit the place you wanted to work at, fill out a few forms, and wait for a call. With the advent of the internet and online forms, quite a few steps were added. Find the company’s website, fill out their forms, wait for an email, then maybe get a telephone interview. And that’s not even counting online job boards.
Social Media
But there’s one other thing that’s changed the job search landscape drastically: social media. Websites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram can be great for finding job opportunities but can also harm your chances of getting a job. As noted by Business News Daily, a 2018 CareerBuilder survey noted that “70% of employers use social media to screen candidates during the hiring process, and about 43% of employers use social media to check on current employees.”
Are Job Seekers Censoring Their Posts?
Given that content potential employers see as “inappropriate” can harm job seekers’ chances of getting a job, we asked our readers if they had ever deleted or censored social media posts while job searching or working for a company.
Seventy-nine percent of those surveyed had never censored or deleted their social media posts. Reasons ranged from not having anything they thought was objectionable to believing it wasn’t their employer’s business what they posted outside of work hours.
Do Employers Really Care?
So, we have one side of the story. Job seekers haven’t really censored their posts. But what about employers? Are they really passing on candidates because of their social media history? We held a poll on Refresh Leadership, our blog for business leaders, to see what they had to say.
Forty-six percent of those surveyed, almost half, said they had indeed passed on candidates due to their posts on social media. Reasons included candidates posting insults online about past employers to having too many partying posts or other content the manager thought was inappropriate.
Your Social Media Presence Matters
While you might not think what you post matters all that much, or that it isn’t any of your employer’s business what you do online, employers do often take your social media presence into account when deciding whether to make an offer. Which means it might be worth it to clean up some of those older posts.
Are you going to clean up your social media now? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments section below!
