Online Reputation and social network recruitment

What is digital reputation?

What you post on social media and how you use it is much more important than you imagine. This is not a private matter: the content is public for millions of people. Above all, it is visible by recruiters, human resources managers, your current and your future employer.

Social networks are the fundamental tool of your personal branding that you create with all the contents that you publish. This will give lots of information about who you are and what you do in life. Therefore you need to manage them in order to ensure you a good publicity.

The digital reputation, or the image that each of us builds on the web, through content sharing, forum discussions, blogs and more recently on social networks, is a place where people underestimate what they are exposing themselves to. For this reason, when looking for a job, it is important to pay attention to the image and the traces that you leave on social and professional networks and more generally on the web.

How does digital reputation affect your career?

Every time you submit a resume, it is very likely that the recruiter, after checking the relevance of your profile for the job description, searches for your track on the main social networks:

• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Instagram

So be careful with your publications, with the topics you are dealing with and, most importantly, carefully check the level of confidentiality of your accounts (ie who can see what). The advice we give you is:

• manage your LinkedIn profile correctly
• actively participate in the discussions that interest you
• create a functional network highlighting your professional skills

The most important part of your profile is obviously the one that refers to work experiences, but do not forget to mention awards, rewards and related projects in your career, as well as personal skills.

Have you ever tried googling your own name?

It is important to remember that often, the first results obtained by typing your name on Google refer to Facebook, a place where it is easy to exceed certain limits, even unintentionally. Pay special attention to items such as profile pictures and personal information. Admittedly, recruiters are familiar with the entertainment tonality of Facebook over LinkedIn, but having on your wall bad taste or obscene content, or content in opposition to the company policies, would certainly not work in your favor. One recruiter out of three admits having rejected an interesting candidate after review his online presence. Web 2.0 is a fantastic resource, but difficult to manage…do not be caught off guard.

How to behave on social networks?

We tried to summarize the points of attention to consider on social networks and the mistakes to avoid.

The 5 things to improve your e-reputation:

1. Update his/her profiles
2. Have a professional profile picture
3. Control your activities on the Web
4. On social networks, separate your personal and professional accounts
5. Follow the profiles of the interesting companies

The 5 things you shouldn’t do

1. Neglect his/her profiles on social networks
2. Forget to set some filters
3. Ignore privacy settings
4. Use vulgar language
5. Talk about others in trouble