The ‘YOU’ brand is always on display.

It’s common knowledge, isn’t it, that when you are on the look-out for a job there’s a strong possibility that your social media life will be scrutinised.

Submitting your CV to a recruiter or directly to a potential employer is an obvious trigger for an online review of You, and while your anonymous reviewer has to be careful how what is found is used in assessing You, human nature is after all human nature. What you write, how you write, your likes and dislikes, who you associate with – all these things will have an impact, positive or negative, on your job chances.

But delve a little deeper and you will realise that your brand is on display all the time. Social recruiting has moved from a trend, to a necessity with the vast majority of employers using social recruiting. You might think that LinkedIn is the destination of choice for this – and you would be right. However, research reveals that all social networks are now fair recruiting game. In fact, two thirds of recruiters use Facebook to find new talent, while more than half of recruiters now use Twitter for their talent search, revealing the importance of watching what you tweet.

It’s probably obvious what sits well and what reflects less well with what an employer might find in your social media footprint. Likes include good spelling and grammar, relevant professional memberships and a healthy dose of volunteering. The list of what they don’t like to discover is somewhat longer, as you might imagine.
Sex and drugs feature, although rock’n’roll is OK.
Swearing and drunkenness are a “no no” too.
Of course, the moral of the story is that you should be careful what you post. But it’s hard.

It’s hard in the real world to watch what you say, and how you say it. With fingers blurred with the speed of that tweet or witty facebook retort, it’s equally difficult, or perhaps more so, to be disciplined. And unlike the real world, the online world doesn’t forget. That careless comment can be revisited again and again.

So whether you are job hunting, or blissfully happy in your work (at least for the time being) your brand is always on display. It would be bad enough to miss out on the job you applied for let alone missing out on the job you never knew you wanted.

A ShowMySocial report will analyse the last three years of your social media activity and play it back to you.
Highlighting everything from swearwords, and mentions of your previous employers through to inconsistencies in your personal information and most frequently used vocabulary.

If there’s anything you don’t like simply click through and remove it.