Scrub Your Profile Clean!

Last week we wrote about the need for job seekers to clean up their social profile as part of their ongoing job search. Based on whose survey you follow, employers are increasingly scoping you out online as part of their initial vetting process. It’s estimated that 50-73% of all employers use social media as a hiring tool, but I would guess that number is closer to 100%… I mean in this day and age, who is not going to “Google” someone they are considering hiring?
According to a recent Jobvite survey:

What you post or Tweet can have positive or negative impact on what recruiters think of you. Four out of five recruiters liked to see memberships and affiliations with professional organizations on a candidate’s profile, and another 66% react positively when a profile mentions volunteerism efforts. On the other hand, references to illicit drugs, posts of a sexual nature, and mentions of alcohol consumption were likely to be viewed negatively by 78%, 67%, and 47% of recruiters. Interestingly enough, poor grammar and spelling mistakes are worse social networking sins than writing about your latest binge-drinking adventure: 54% of recruiters had a negative reaction to grammar and spelling mistakes, compared to 47% of recruiters negative reaction to alcohol references.

While most people keep their LinkedIn (& Hourly) profiles professional in tone, Facebook and Twitter have a tendency to include more personal information, and as a result need to be monitored by anyone thinking about looking for a job. Problem is who can remember what you wrote last year that might be considered questionable? Or worse yet, what someone else posted to your wall? This is the reason we were thrilled to find out about a new service called Simplewash that will in their words “help you with the transition from ‘21st birthday’ to ‘Business Causal’ with SimpleWash™. Wash away all those dirty jokes and beer talk, those late night snapshots, those forgotten “likes.” Keep track of all the dirt and grime that attaches to your internet identity and make you STAY FRESH.”  The service is simple. Just log in using your  Facebook or Twitter accounts, and Simplewash will return a list of questionable posts, photos, fan pages and liked links that might be questionable, with the offending item highlighted in green. It will then provide you with links back to the original post to do with it what you will.

While my own profile came back clean, it is funny to see the number of time things like “wine”, “xx”(hugs) and my favorite expletives were referenced.

Another service helping in the fight to protect your online image is Reppler. More of a personal reputation defender, Reppler continuously monitors your online image across different social networks and analyzes your content to give you a sense of how others might perceive you, as well as alerts you to any privacy and security risks you have

With tools like these, there's no reason not to be on top of your social profile. Get cleaning!