Applying for a job is an exciting time. Quite commonly, a person has the education and skills required for the job but never gets invited to an interview.

Why? 

Prospective employers will do a free people search on you and most likely look for social media pages first.

If there’s anything on these pages that may put your character into question, it’s possible they’ll move on to another candidate.

Here are the things to refrain from posting, why, and how to clean up your online presence.

Things Not to Post

A prospective employer is looking for anything that might suggest that your character and behavior outside of work can impact your work life.

They’re looking for photos or videos of you in compromising positions or excessively partying. The posts they’re looking for indicate you may have problems working with minorities or negative talk about former employers.

Inappropriate Images

Everyone knows that first impressions count. Images and videos on a social media page could be another person’s first contact with you. If these pictures display you behaving in an untoward way, dressing too inappropriately, or engaging in immoral behavior, this will go against you.

Content Suggesting High Alcohol or Drug Consumption

Like with images, any posts that suggest that you party extremely hard and often could cause red flags for a future employer.

These posts suggest that your social life is more important than your business life. Implied excessive drinking or drug consumption could make them think that your recovery during business hours may impact your job performance.

Racial, Bigoted, or Minority Slurs

Everyone is entitled to have their own opinions, and Vocalizing them on such public platforms as social media isn’t wise.

If a prospective employer gets the sense that you have any kind of prejudice towards people, it’ll be difficult for them to consider letting you join their team.

Trash Previous Employers or Colleagues

Future employers look for team players who get along well with their colleagues. Any social media posts condemning other companies, for whatever reason, and naming and criticizing employees casts you in a bad light.

What this tells people is that you like to complain and don’t have respect for a company or its people.

As much as you may want to let people know about your bad experiences, future employers will hold this behavior against you.

Positive Social Media Presence

Finding out what others can see about you online takes little time. A simple Google search shows what pages are public, and you can also preempt what audience sees what posts by amending the settings each time.

Google Yourself

To ensure you don’t have an adverse online profile, do a Google search of yourself. What you can see is what a future employer can also access. Go through each link and if there’s any questionable post or picture, remove it, or amend its settings.

Alternatively, go through your social media site, page by page, and once again remove or amend anything that might be considered inappropriate.

Alternate Viewing Settings

Social media pages are an excellent source to rant about daily issues, but be selective about who can view the posts.

Make intelligent decisions about your audience. For example, if you’ve saved a family of kittens from being swept down a drain, post that to a public audience.

If, on the other hand, your boss has made you work overtime for three days in a row without paying you for that, vent it to a private audience of friends only.

Clean Social Media Gets You Interviews

If you’ve been applying for jobs but never got to the interview stage, consider checking your social media presence.

Prospective employers may have already done an online search and not been happy with what they’ve found.

Images, videos, or posts suggesting inappropriate behavior or negative talk about others, may mean you’re not suitable for their team.

Google search yourself to see what others can see and clean up whatever seems to paint you in a bad light.

Finally, make sensible choices about what audience can view what posts. Always consider who is looking at your pages.