The vast majority of the U.S. population — 81 percent — now has a social media account. Despite the growing popularity of social (it’s up nearly 20 percent from four years ago), not everyone has gotten smarter about how they employ it.
Are you quick to send out social media posts and tweets without really thinking through the possible ramifications for your job search and professional opportunities? New job hunters in particular — including recent college graduates hoping to find work, and students seeking internships as they prepare to enter the job market — may need to adjust habits from their younger days of simply airing whatever comes to mind online in search of “likes.”
So whether you’re gearing up for graduation in June or already have a job that you don’t want to lose, it’s important to think twice about the way you use social media in light of your career goals. If you don’t, you could inadvertently knock yourself out of contention for a position or find your current one in jeopardy.
[See: 10 Ways Social Media Can Help You Land a Job.]
The types of situations that you need to worry about when it comes to your tweets and posts vary depending on whether you are a job seeker or an employee. Job seekers must exercise particular caution when deciding what to publish to their networks and followers, since their social profile is often the first thing that a recruiter or hiring manager associates with them.
Research has shown that almost 10 percent of young job seekers between ages 16 and 34 have missed out on job opportunities due to something they’ve published on Twitter or Facebook.
[See: 10 Tech Jobs That Make the Most Money.]
With this in mind, job seekers should avoid the following:
— Negativity in tweets. Don’t speak poorly about any person or company.
— Overly controversial topics. Decide whether discussing your views about red-flag issues like religion or politics is worth the possibility of losing out on a job offer. And definitely avoid making insensitive remarks about any group of people.
— Unprofessional comments and photos. You might be accustomed to sharing your personal life online, but use good judgment when deciding how much is too much — for example, when commemorating your Friday night exploits. Remember that what you post online serves as a representation of who you are — so when your priority is to secure a job opportunity, make sure what you share expresses what you want employers to know about you.
Employees also need to think about whether they are connected on social media with co-workers who might take issue with something they send out on social. For example, a new study by software company Igloo called The State of Social Media in the Workplace found that over a quarter of employees surveyed connect with all of their colleagues on social media, though most expressed being more discriminating about choosing which co-workers to link with online.
The study found that a number of difficult circumstances can arise at work when you fail to think through what you tweet to your friends and followers. Some respondents shared comments and photos that caused rifts in the office, such as these situations:
— After calling in sick, an employee posted something on social that inadvertently revealed to colleagues she was actually not ill.
— After attending a party, an employee posted nightlife photos on social, leading to an upset co-worker “unfriending” that employee.
— After an employee complained on social about a negative experience with a co-worker, that very co-worker read the post.
Poorly thought out social media decisions like these can cause not only awkwardness but understandable friction between people who work together. In the case of your boss seeing an inappropriate post, the consequences can be even worse: Rewire reports that 17 percent of employers have actually fired an employee due to the employee’s social media posts.
[See: 8 Ways Millennials Can Build Leadership Skills.]
It’s not that employees aren’t thinking about possible ramifications of an ill-fated tweet — Igloo’s research found that nearly half of those surveyed (46 percent) do worry about what a colleague might think about their posts, and some (10 percent) even avoid connecting with bosses and supervisors via social. And more than half (55 percent) of employees pulled the plug on a planned post because they did recognize it could be problematic due to a colleague connection.
But clearly there’s still progress to be made by workers who don’t fall into these camps, as well as job seekers who don’t fully think through the fact that decision-makers on the employer’s side are likely to read their social media feed. So whether your goal is to land your first job or hold onto the one you have, think about what you’re saying — and to whom you’re saying it — before you tweet.
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Why Career-Minded Professionals Should Think Before They Tweet originally appeared on usnews.com
