What Do Employers Look For in a Candidate’s Social Media? 

As a job seeker, you might wonder whether the buzzword that potential employers are looking into job seeker’s social media is true or not. The answer is: employers do screen candidate’s social media before they call them for an interview or hire them. According to a survey, 70 percent of employers use social media to screen candidates during a hiring process, and about 43 percent of employers use social media to check on current employees. 

Employers do look at talent’s social media accounts for an array of reasons, but many aim to make sure that candidate is a good fit with the company. 

What do employers look for? 

• The sort of person you might be, like a glimpse of your character and personality. 

• Whether you’re social and outgoing in an appropriate way. 

• Whether you could be a cultural fit to your employer's organization. 

• If you’re authentic or fake. 

• If the content you post paints a picture of you as intelligent and friendly, or the other way around. 

• Whether the information you post about yourself matches up with what you’ve set out in your resume. 

• Whether you network and/or contribute to your community or are always just out for parties, drinking, and other useless stuff. 

• If you can write well. 

• If you use profanity. 

• Whether you post inappropriate content, such as racist or sexist comments. 

As you know what recruiters and employers look for in your social media, it is time to revisit and rearrange your social media contents, especially the popular sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. 

See also: Want to Get Hired? Take These Online Courses First

Don’t delete entirely 

After reading this article, you might remember all the embarrassing posts you’ve posted online. And out of fear of being discovered, you might want to erase your social media altogether. The truth, doing so might only backfire. 

Based on the survey mentioned earlier, about half of employers (47 percent) said they would not call a person for an interview if they cannot find them online. More than one-quarter of employers said it is because they like to gather more information before calling a candidate, and 20 percent said it’s because they expect candidates to have an online presence. 

In addition, while you might have deleted your online social presence, it does not guarantee that your data is completely gone. Hence, the best practice to keep your social accounts clean is by not deleting it entirely to avoid suspicion. 

How to clean up old social media post all at once 

• Facebook 

Facebook has added a bulk delete tool to make it easier to clean up your old posts. Here is how: 

In the apps for Android and iOS, tap your avatar (top left) > tap three dots and choose Activity log > pick Manage activity and Your posts > use tick boxes on the left to select posts you want to manage (achieve hides or recycle bin deletes)

If you use web: click Manage posts under status update box > search through your posts and select ones you want to remove > click Next > Delete posts to confirm

• Instagram 

Go to your profile > select the post > tap on three dots > Delete (you can also choose archive option to hide the photos or videos)

Instagram does not give bulk-deleting options at this point. But you can use third-party service Mass delete for Instagram (app you can download on your Android, no option for iOS). 

• Twitter 

Same as Instagram, Twitter has yet to roll out a bulk delete tool of its own. You can remove your tweets through the official interface. 

Open your twitter account > click the downward arrow next to any of your tweets > choose Delete (there is no way to restore deleted tweets) 

Or, you can use third-party tools, such as Jumbo (available for Android and iOS). All you need to do is to connect it to your Twitter account > choose Set up under the archive option > you can Remove tweets older than a day, week, month or three months (note that Jumbo is still archiving your posts, but they are removed from Twitter) 

Another option for Twitter is TweetDelete on the web. Connect it to your Twitter account, then choose to delete tweets that are older than a week to a year. You can also remove tweets containing certain words, and the process runs automatically every few days if needed. 

Note that whichever apps you pick, you can only remove 3,200 tweets at a time as per Twitter limitations. To get around that restriction, you need to upload your entire Twitter archive to your chosen service, thus only do this with apps you absolutely trust. 

• LinkedIn 

LinkedIn has yet provided options to delete posts in bulk, hence you have to scroll through your post and delete them one by one. 

Go to your profile > select “see all” on the top left of activity box > Screen through your posts, articles, and documents > click three dots > select Delete

Next read: Boost Your LinkedIn Presence with This Checklist