Now that so many of us are on Facebook or Twitter, it’s no longer just a case of entertaining your family and friends through your pages. Potential employers these days are frequently using social networking sites to research their potential candidates and even seek out interviewees.  Therefore it’s more important than ever to make a good impression online, you never know who’s watching!

Polish your Page

It’s a scary statistic for anyone in the job market but allegedly almost half of employers confess to having rejected a candidate after having checked out their social online presence.  Take a cursory look at your pages and think to yourself: what would an employer think?  If you are always posting updates about how much you hate your job, it’s probably not the best idea.  For many reasons!

And what about your photos?  Drunken antics might be fun to share amongst your mates but do you really want a future employer seeing them?  Make sure your pictures (especially your profile picture) are as sensible as possible.

Of course, a lot of the above becomes moot when you consider that you can alter your privacy settings to control who sees what on your page.  So be careful to check exactly what your settings are.  It might be wise to set limited access to non-friends so that your education and qualification background are displayed enabling employers to see a little bit about you without seeing the whole shebang!

Finding a Job through Social Networking

Both Twitter and Facebook are rich sources of job opportunities so it’s worth spending some time signing up to job hunt services on both.  Twitter in particular is often used by companies to tweet about their latest opportunities so start following as many influential people within your field as you can and try to find a way of letting them know you’re there (without irritating them of course!) so that when a job opportunity does come up, you’re already on their mind.

Following the Right People

Of course, you don’t just have to follow the company bosses.  Try finding other employees and watch what they tweet about.  It might give you a useful insight into life within the company you’ve set your sights on and you might even end up befriending some employees who can recommend you for future posts.  Follow these people and see which groups they belong to, which articles they are reading and generally what they get up to on a daily basis!

Being proactive and putting yourself in front of potential employers is a valuable use of your time and sites like Facebook and Twitter have made it easier than ever to achieve this.  Be sure to always project a professional persona through your social networking sites.  Social networking is no longer about chatting to your mates and having a laugh, there’s a more serious edge to it these days so unless you have blocked your profile from prying eyes, it’s best to err on the side of caution.