Social media can destroy your personal brand

Once when I was in college, a high school friend came down for a weekend and we went out partying. In the process of excessive drinking and the crowds of college weekend binge partying, we got separated. This was in the days before cell phones, so we didn’t have any way of contacting each other. After looking for me all over, my friend (who didn’t drink much) gave up and went to his car to head to my apartment, thinking I had just gone home.

When he got to his car, he found me…passed out drunk…on the hood of his car. He poured me into the passenger seat, took me home, and helped me to bed.

Our little secret

The next morning, I had no memory of the incident, but we both had a good laugh as he told me about it. Except for a few friends we told the story to, it was our little secret. A couple years later, when I began interviewing for jobs in my profession, none of my prospective employers knew anything about my irresponsible behavior.

In those dark ages, not only were there no cell phones, there was no internet, and thus, no social media. If there had been, my friend most likely would have taken a quick picture of my awkward slumber with his smart phone, posted it on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc., and tagged me for the whole world to see…friends, enemies, and prospective employers.

Under the hiring radar

If we had the internet when I interviewed, those companies could have done a Google search and found all kinds of information about me; including that embarrassing picture of me being an idiot.

Fortunately, all they had to go on was my resume, my interviews and the references that I provided. Today, employers have all kinds of resources on which to base their employment decisions. Many employers review each candidate’s social media accounts as a common practice.

I’m sure every company has different criteria on how they use social media to make a hiring decision, but there are some best practices anyone should follow to keep a clean social media reputation.

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