Update Your Profile Photo
Just as you wouldn’t show up to a job interview in a bikini or tank top, you don’t want your prospective employer’s first impression of you to be an image like this. Often, employers peek at Facebook pages while scanning resumes, and if your profile pic screams party animal, you’re likely to be eliminated from the pool before you ever show up in your nice new suit.Profile pics don’t have to be a photo of you in a business suit toting a laptop case, but it does need to be one that gives a good impression. Axe the one of you cuddled up with a Budweiser on the couch with your current crush, and opt for one of you dressed nicely for dinner with your folks or perched on Granny’s porch swing.
Revisit Your About Page
It’s fine (expected actually) for you to have lots of interests outside your chosen profession. Employers aren’t likely to mind your fondness for Pretty Little Liars or The Walking Dead. But you need to steer clear of radical political or religious views or any extreme points of view. After all, it’s impossible to know how the prospective interviewer feels, and there’s no sense alienating them before you get a chance to impress them.
Look at Your Tagged Photos
Depending on how far the prospective employer is willing to look (and chances are, if they’re consulting Facebook, they’ll get all the info they can), you need to clean out all those buy generic levitra india photos friends tagged you in where you’re acting less than responsibly.
Employers are looking for key traits: maturity, tactfulness, responsibility, intelligence, and commitment. Are the photos you’re tagged in indicative of these traits? Untag those that don’t make it look like you’re this candidate.
Scan Your Wall Posts and Statuses
Are your statuses written as if you’ve no idea how to spell, articulate or punctuate? Clean those up so you look like the intelligent, educated college graduate you are. What friends say about you can be just as harmful as what you say. After all, “Woo hoo, were u wasted last nite or whut?” looks just as bad coming from your buddy as it does from you.
Twelve percent of employers who check Facebook accounts on prospective employees won’t hire someone who uses emoticons, so clean up your inarticulate posts and statuses. You can get help finding and fixing these from the Reputation.com YouTube Channel.
Review Your Friends
Some of your friends may not be ready to say goodbye to the party life, get a job and start acting like a mature, self-sufficient adult, and that’s okay. What’s not okay is letting their posts, tags, and comments hurt your chances of moving on for yourself. You might need to take a long, hard look at your friends list, and say a silent goodbye to the ones who generally have nothing more to offer the Facebook community than their commentary on drunken brawls, naked chicks, and the latest update on the local pot dealer.
Debates on whether or not it’s fair or ethical for an employer to look people’s Facebook pages rages on. But there’s no point in letting your profile hamper your chances of success in an already tough job market.
