It’s no doubt that social media plays a key part in the job search today. It gives employers an insight in to who you really are, equally it allows you to gain a better insight into a company’s culture and learn more about the company.
On #Saferinternetday here are Handle’s top tips for a Social Media privacy health check!
LinkedIn – Headhunters and recruiters actively use LinkedIn to search for candidates and can approach you directly, so it’s important to have your light firmly on if you are a job seeker! You can find the privacy settings under the Account section (where your profile picture is). This then brings up several options for you to edit.
- Your public profile – This is how your profile appears in search engines, you can pick and choose which parts of your profile are visible, and create a custom URL to enhance your personal brand. It’s important to know that should you opt for your profile to be visible by everyone you basic information (Name) is required.
- Connections – You can choose if you want your connections visible or not.
- Profile edits – This option allows you to choose if your connections and companies that you follow are notified when a change is made to your profile. If you’re a job seeker and updating your profile you may choose to switch this off, so that your current employer doesn’t twig that you’re on the hunt! (instead use the open candidate feature)
- Profile viewing modes – When you view someone’s profile, you can select what they see, your name and headline, someone at the organisation you work for or anonymous LinkedIn member – If you’re a job seeker it might be good to let recruiters know that you have been looking at their profile.
Be sure to check your privacy settings whenever there is an update to Facebook, usually they are pretty good at letting you know when things have changed, and they are constantly changing. As this platform is not as formal as LinkedIn and you’re most likely to post information about your social life, it’s important to ensure posts are visible to your selected audiences only. You can find the privacy settings under the settings section on Facebook.
- Who can see my stuff – you can customise who can see your future posts and can also turn on a notification so that you can review anything that you’re tagged in by another user before it is posted to your feed or wall.
- Who can find you – This can be customised to friends only so that if someone gets hold of your email address or phone number and searches you via it on Facebook, you still won’t be visible.
- You can also choose if search engines outside of Facebook can link to your profile.
- Timeline and Tagging – You can drill right down here in regards to who can post information on your wall and who is allowed to tag you in posts and pictures. One thing to be aware of is that if you tag someone in a post it opens up that particular post to be visible by their friends as well.
This is pretty straight forward, you can either have your tweets protected or not.
- If you choose to have a public profile then anyone will be able to see anything that you post. Anyone can Retweet, like and engage with your tweets
- If your tweets are protected then only your followers will be able to engage with the content you post.
Want to find out how to use social media to find your perfect job, click here