Congratulations, You Are Ready For Your Job Search!

Thank you for choosing That’s Good HR as a leader in Indianapolis staffing to assist you in your job search.  As professionals in the HR and recruiting industry here locally in Indianapolis, we are here to help you every step of the way.  We see you have an updated resume, a suit cleaned and ready for the interview along with an updated list of references.  WONDERFUL!  Although, one thing is missing off your mental checklist….have you considered your social media profiles to make sure they are ready to be viewed by human resource professionals and recruiters?

A survey conducted by Jobvite in 2014 http://www.jobvite.com/blog/2014-social-recruiting-survey-infographic/ showed that 93% of recruiters and human resource staff planned to use social media in their recruiting efforts.  This means they might very well find you on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn before they ever touch your resume.  If that makes you feel a little squeamish, you are not alone!  Since we are in the trenches of HR staffing and recruiting in Indianapolis everyday, we will help you get ready for the continual growth in social media recruiting so you can feel confident headed into your job search.  Jobvite noted that 61-65% of recruiters react negatively to profanity, grammar and punctuation errors, with references to recreational drugs close behind.  While recruiters don’t love political rants or alcohol references, only 47% said it would make them reconsider you for hire.  Focus on cleaning up your social media posts to ensure this doesn’t cost you a chance at an interview.  Be sure to watch what you are being tagged in as well.  If you think interviews haven’t been cancelled or resumes haven’t lined the trash can after viewing your online social media profiles, as an Indianapolis staffing firm helping hundreds of candidates a year, we can assure you this comes into the equation more often than not.  The good news is that it’s a simple fix to make sure what human resources or hiring managers see online is only what you want them to!

As professionals in HR and Indianapolis staffing, That’s Good HR has a few recommendations to ensure you have a successful job search:

Facebook

1. Set your profile status to private or posts viewable only to friends.
2. Beware of what you are being tagged in whether it’s a picture, funny yet most likely inappropriate e-card, or a status update.
3. We recommend your profile picture be appropriate for a work place.  A good rule of thumb is if you wouldn’t frame it and put in on your desk, it might not be the first picture you want your potential boss seeing.
4. Pay attention to your grammar, punctuation, profanity and avoid any references to drug use on status updates.

Instagram

1.  Our first recommendation is to change your profile name to something not everyone is going to know you by.  Then you can have more freedom to post and keep it personal.
2. Follow the same rules that we applied to Facebook

Twitter

1.  Select or change your twitter handle to something they won’t connect to you if you want to have freedom to post anything you would like on twitter.
2. Obviously punctuation becomes an issue because of hashtags #nospacesallowed so this would be an acceptable place for no punctuation.
3. Be selective with whom you follow and comment on because this can be viewed by others.  Be careful not to come across as argumentative.  Twitter feuds are funny if you are a celebrity, but your future boss might not agree.

Please reach out to your recruiter here at That’s Good HR if you want a second opinion on your profiles or if you have questions on what is appropriate or not appropriate.  With our Indianapolis based recruiting team having years of experience in staffing, there is a lot of experience for you to pull from that will help you be successful in your job search.  Give yourself the upper hand against your competition and don’t let something silly on your social media profile knock you out of the running before the interview!