Judging Candidates by their Social Media Profiles

You post a snap of yours in that hot red slit-skirt and ruffled top and pop! You publish it on Facebook for the public to check out your sexy avatar. Your Twitter profile bears your candid remarks on your manager from the previous company which won you several empathies from your colleagues who bore the same brunt! But before you revel from all such public postings, take a second to ponder—can these posts have any negative impact on your next recruitment possibilities?

Gone are the days when candidates could be contented and confident about their interviews by prepping their resumes by a few added skills or grabbing some significant resources which could do the magic of getting them the job. With the Social Media Network websites creating a whole lot of brouhaha in every sphere, the job market is no exception. Before you stepped into the interview venue your employer may have already crawled into and scoured your Facebook or LinkedIn account to check out content which may be label you as an inappropriate candidate for the job you had been so preparing for. The reason: employers say they do it to do optimum justice to their organizations.

The evidence for this can be obtained from a whole plethora of findings which depict employers weeding out candidates by glimpsing into their social media profiles. Here’s what the studies show and what your next employer might be looking to dig out from your Facebook profile.

What Studies Reveal?

A recent study by CareerBuilder showed as much as 51 percent of recruiters in America reject candidates on grounds of finding something on the social media profiles which they deemed unsuitable and not conducive to the growth of the company. Forty-six percent of candidates were done away with because their profiles depicted provocative snaps or inappropriate information. Thirty-six percent of the managers struck out names of candidates because they had published messages that spoke badly or abusively about their previous colleagues or bosses. As many as 41 percent said they dumped many because of evidence found on these websites depicting usage of drugs or alcohol. Jobvite, an organization that supplies applicant tracking software in its survey, revealed 92 percent of recruiters using social media website for judging candidates. Such findings make it clear that in today’s world, ruled by the Internet and social media, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are de facto platforms that HR professionals bank on to whittle candidates and bring down the numbers to a dozen few who would knock the interview door.

What Do Employers Look for?

If you thought you could be saved from the prying eyes of your employers by keeping your social media profile to yourself, well, you may not quite escape their keen vision. For whether you provide them with your profile or not they are sure to bang on every social media platform for your name and check if you really suit the job profile they are hiring you for. Those rummaging for marketing professionals scathe out information to check if the person they are recruiting can anyway damage the reputation of the company. A well-designed Facebook or LinkedIn profile can actually add as an extended resume whereby you can showcase your passion for the work you are doing or any other additional activity you have volunteered in. A profile which is made exclusively private may not be seen as a potential profile in the least since employers would consider you to be veiling something underneath.

The trick is to have an open profile that showcases you as you are, clear it off all profanity or inappropriate content, erase all pictures showing your binging on alcohol or drugs and take care of your spellings and grammar. For even if you thought you could leave it behind with your school and college books, your employers might just jilt you because of your poor sense of tenses and wrong usage of “C”s and “S”s.

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