5 Career-Killing Social Media Mistakes to Avoid
At CareerGlider, we’re going to assume you got the no-drunk-profile-pics-on-Facebook memo, and your Facebook presence is career-appropriate (or at least career-acceptable). Nowadays, that message has reached most people—a 2013 survey found that 63% of users have modified their Facebook privacy settings, although 25% of people have never touched them.
Social media is still a potential minefield. At one end, there is the risk of being indistinguishable from one of Twitter’s 23 million bots. At the other end is the risk of causing real offence and distress with an ill-considered remark, and facing real world consequences.
It’s a difficult balance—and there are surprising ways of being tripped up. Here are some tips to help you navigate the grey zone between the professional and personal on social media.
#1 Poor quality posts
It’s obvious—or should be obvious—that prospective employers don’t like to see drug references in your social media posts. But employers make other judgments that may surprise you. For example, 66% of recruiters reevaluate candidates negatively for poor spelling and grammar. That’s a larger proportion than disapprove of profanity (63%), references to alcohol (44%), or guns (51%)—and a strong argument for proofreading posts.
#2 Constant ranting
Social media lets us say the things we can’t say to people’s faces. Funny, intelligent, and biting rants that express common frustrations are always popular. But even if you’re not ranting about an employer or a client—which can have serious consequences—there are reasons to take care, especially on political rants. 1 in 6 recruiters will reconsider a candidate negatively for an extremely strong political association on social media.
Beyond that, serial ranting can alienate people in the way that constant negativity does in real life. Or as Buzzfeed put it, ranting can become a soul-crushing habit that needs to be banned.
#3 Being on-brand all the time
Yes, it’s a good thing to promote your brand, and not to be unprofessional online. Unfortunately, it’s not a good social media strategy to be nothing but professional either. People engage with social media in order to interact, and it’s hard to interact with someone who’s all work and no play. “If your entire Twitter feed becomes a stream of on-brand blather all the time, you will become a deeply boring and uninteresting human being to the world at large,” counsels Ed Zitron at Inc. That doesn’t get you anywhere.
Recruiter John Feldmann also warns against being one of the “number grubbers”: trying to run up 10,000 friends/followers/connections because you can. Again, social media runs on interaction, and people can spot fake or non-existent interaction a long way off.
#4 Not checking the hashtag
On Twitter, check hashtags before you use them, no matter how innocuous they seem.
This might not be worth mentioning, if it hadn’t tripped up more than one social media manager. In two of the worst examples, DiGiorno’s Pizza failed to check #whyistayed before making light of domestic violence, and British boutique Celeb Boutique failed to realize #Aurora was trending because of a terrible massacre in a Colorado movie theater.
#5 Don’t post about your job search while employed
Show your employer some respect, and some instinct for self-preservation, and don’t publicize on social media that you’re looking for a new job. In particular, don’t get tripped up on LinkedIn. If you’re doing some work on your LinkedIn profile, do it quietly—turn off the setting that notifies your network of any changes to your profile.
The best advice is still to be yourself, but not your unedited self—think before you post!
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