Sep 16
Manage Your Online Reputation for Job Success
Guest Blogger: Corey Hammond
I wanted to do a follow up to my post Embarrassment with these 4 Employment Strategies. I just read an article that Andy Beal mentioned on his blog called One in five employers uses social networks in hiring process. CareerBuilder.com did a study of more than 31,000 employers and 20% of them say that they will use social media when looking for job candidates. Here are some of the top concerns that stood out to me from the article:
- Information about alcohol or drug use (41% of managers said this was a top concern)
- Inappropriate photos or information posted on a candidate’s page (40%)
- Bad-mouthing of former employers or fellow employees (28%)
- Inaccurate qualifications (27%)
- Unprofessional screen names (22%)
Wow. It makes you want to go to your social network profiles and search through all of your wall of comments to make sure that someone hasn’t said something that could be taken the wrong way or tainted the image you are trying to portray to an employer.
I have a short and interesting experience from a couple weeks ago. The Karcher Group belongs to a lot of the local chamber of commerce groups here in Canton, Ohio and we did a company bio plus an informational session on social media to the Young Professionals Network. I would say the group is all between the ages of 20-35 and is currently in the workforce. A bunch of the group has Facebook or MySpace and a couple have LinkedIn profiles. Out of a group of approximately 20 people, only about 2 people at most knew much about social media and its relationship to their reputation management. I would have figured that a group of that age would know more about this stuff. Sure they use social networks everyday and they never think twice. The fact they never considered was those same social media profiles could potentially hinder or prevent them from getting a job. Here are a couple quick tips to help manage your online reputation:
- Use social media - Don’t be scared of it just because people can find you. If you are setting up the profiles, you have control of what shows up on them. This control allows you to dictate your image online and can help you. The article says that the “study did find that 24% of hiring managers found content on social networks that helped convince them to hire a candidate. Hiring managers
said that profiles showing a professional image and solid references can boost a candidate’s chances for a job.” That leads right into the second tip… - Network - Everyone has heard the phrase “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” I’m not saying that I agree with this 100% but I think there is a lot of power and influence that comes with strong references. Social networks allow you to network and meet people that in some cases you would not be able to get to know. These connections could benefit you in some way down the road.
- Actively monitor and interact - It’s good to have a profile on a social network to help with your online reputation management but creating it and “friending” some people is not good enough. To get the best return on your social media profiles you have to interact with the other people on the network. It is also important to monitor what gets posted and what you, yourself post. Imagine this; A couple years down the road you are looking for a new job. You start doing some research and find Company XYZ. You are about to apply when you realize that John Doe, a friend you went to high school with, works there. Now, have you really kept in touch with John over the years where you can ask him for a referral or reference, or did you just befriend him because you went to high school with him? That relationship now could make all the difference and you probably never took that into consideration when setting up that social network profile.
Being in the search engine marketing industry, sometimes I forget that most people don’t know everything about social media and the implications it can have. There is so much information out there and so much that I am still learning about it as well. Hopefully through articles like this and other publication outlets, others will be able to learn more about social media and be able to manage their own reputations online.