Is social media hurting your chances of getting a job?
Statistics compiled by Forbes Magazine have shown that 37% of employers use social media to get a glimpse of the unguarded thoughts of unsuspecting candidates.
Nowadays, first impressions are made by a quick search of a potential candidate’s social media profile. Statistics compiled by Forbes Magazine have shown that 37% of employers use social media to get a glimpse of the unguarded thoughts of unsuspecting candidates.
The truth is, your social media profile could be limiting your chances of landing your dream job.
With 1.15 billion Facebook users, you might think it is impossible for your potential employer to find your profile; you are wrong. A simple search or a mutual friend could lead the employer directly to your innermost thoughts.
The image of you at your sister’s wedding with a ‘beer and a babe’ in hand has now reached a whole new audience. Strike one.
The employer then scrolls down to your status updates and reads about the reckless driver that cut you off at an intersection last week. The update contains four-letter words and the only emoticons that could possibly describe how angry you were. Strike two.
Strike one sees the employer throw your CV in the dustbin. Strike two becomes irrelevant. Two in five companies use social media networks to screen candidates. With more than 6.1 million South African Facebook users, chances are your future employer is one of them.
By deleting status updates containing profanity and racial or derogatory slurs, you are essentially increasing your chances of being screened for a job that you actually look forward to doing.
A rule of thumb would be – if your less than modest pictures embarrass your parents, you probably shouldn’t be posting them to Twitter or Facebook. What you do online is not like Vegas… It doesn’t stay there.
