What do Your Online Activities and Social Profiles Say About You?  

If you’re preparing for a job interview, you go through a number of steps to make sure you’re presenting the best of yourself. You plan your wardrobe, plan your journey to allow yourself to be a little bit early, and prepare for all the tricky questions. The interviewers will also prepare: They’ll plan the questions, review your resume, and most of them will also review your digital footprint to get a feeling for the type of person you are. You need to make sure that you are presenting the best of yourself digitally.

If you’re job hunting, or just trying to advance yourself professionally, the obvious place to start is with LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a network of professionals which allows you to meet well-connected people who can vouch for you. Over 80 percent of jobs are filled by networking, most of these from an internal candidate or a referral from a trusted source. In addition to its incredibly strong networking capabilities, LinkedIn is a recruitment tool with over ten million active job listings on the platform.

With 500 million global users, 133 million of those in the U.S., LinkedIn is a network that cannot be ignored. With that many users, you also need to make sure you take full advantage of the platform so that your profile stands out. Take something as simple as a photo; if you have one on your profile, you’re likely to get 14 times more profile views, and you’ll be 36 times more likely to receive a message on LinkedIn. You will get 17 times more views if you list at least five skills on your profile. Your headline and your summary are crucial to being found on the platform and being seen in a good light. Whether you’re actively searching for a job or just open to ideas, make sure that you use the feature to let recruiters know you’re open to opportunities.

Most people start paying attention to their digital profile when they’re embarking on a job hunt, but you should always approach your professional brand as a long-term strategy, even if you have the short-term target of finding a job. This is where the activity feature on LinkedIn comes into play. Through the activity feature, a recruiter can see whether you are an active digital networker or if you have just started paying an interest as your previous job came to an end. Recruiters can see which topics you have an opinion on, whether you just like giving the thumbs up to others posts, whether you actively post yourself or if you are one of the one million professionals who have published an article on the platform.

However, even if you are the poster child on LinkedIn, what does your Facebook profile, or your Instagram presence say about you? What have you been vocal about on Twitter? Will your posts on all platforms hinder or help your career prospects going forward?

You need to make sure that all your public profiles show you in your best stead. You need to make sure you manage all your contributions to social platforms with care as much of this information becomes public by default. One way you can manage this is to ensure your personal profiles are set to private and maybe even consider using a different name on these. Make sure that anything that is public that could cause potential problems with colleagues or employers is removed or hidden, including inappropriate language, jokes that may be inappropriate, or anything overtly political.

The first step is to audit your current digital footprint. Do this through a simple Google search on your name. Then you need to go into each relevant result and check the information to see if it is something you would be happy about if a potential employer found it. If not, hide it, or delete it. If you don’t own it, ask the owner to delete it, and, if the owner won’t, you need to create positive content about yourself that will move the negative content farther down search lists.

Look at your LinkedIn profile. Try to make sure you have the basics setup, but work toward an all-star profile.

Finally, check all other social platforms. If they are more personally focused and include content you wouldn’t want your professional network exposed to, make sure they are set as private. Remember, it’s a small world. Your potential employer could be a friend of a friend and could therefore read your comments, even if they are set to private. If you’ve posted something that you wouldn’t want anyone to see, delete it.

Make sure you’re looking after your overall brand, including your digital presence, so that you don’t jeopardize current and future career prospects.