How To Maximize My Social Media To Attract Employers
Social media has rapidly become one of the most important pieces to the puzzle of many areas of living. We use social media as a more efficient way of communicating with people far and near, we use it for celebrating people and for entertainment. With social media, you create ideas and exchange information virtually with a large network of people and this counts for a lot in this century.
A vital part that social media has influenced in life is the workplace. Reports concerning the workplace show an increasing percentage of the usage of social media for professional connections and gathering information. As regards gathering information, employers in many workplaces have long adopted the means of digging into social media pages of potential employees, and this process influences the screening of candidates by employers while hiring.
Jobhacked, a career site for the Arabic market, specifically advises their job-searches on how to make their social media more attractive to international headhunters. There is a lot to learn from this. As an employee or an intending employee, making your social media employer-friendly opens you to a lot of opportunities in the business world. It is important to build your social media with things or updates that represent what you do, the skills you are proficient in, and how much growth you have achieved in the past few years. Everyone needs a properly managed social media page for employment or work purposes.
Personal branding on social media is very vital for promoting what you do asides from word of mouth. Before you submit your resume or get called for that interview, your social media accounts might just be adding up numbers for you with your intended employer. About 93% of hiring managers revealed that they search for their potential employees on social media and dig up relevant facts about them from their pages.
You have to be prepared for when your online presence will be checked by your employer. Here are some important things to do to ensure your social media is maximized:-
Build In Public
While learning a skill or carrying out an activity that is in line with the career path you have chosen, you should always update your social media pages with all you have achieved or will be achieving. This helps employers see your level of growth and skill proficiency. Put every relevant activity up on all your social media platforms.
Engage Posts and Share Ideas Openly
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Asides from building in public, another thing that stands you out is the number of engagements you have had with prominent or important figures in your field. When you engage posts, you get to leave snippets of all you know about what you do and how much insight you have to offer. It helps employers know more about you. Following influencers in your field helps to give your social media face a boost and it is an effective way of showing that you use social media for more than just personal entertainment. Sharing relevant and helpful content like blog posts, articles, also portrays your professionalism.
Delete Incriminating Posts
Although the social media account belongs to you, when maximizing for employers to see, it is important that you delete some unnecessary content that could portray you in a bad light in front of potential employers. You should work on censoring yourself and deleting obnoxious, demeaning, obscene, and rude posts from your page. Curse words should also be deleted as they are not professional. Also, profile pictures that do not fit the professional standard should be deleted as some algorithms can use them against you.
Review Your Timeline Regularly
Cleaning up your own page might make you overlook your timeline since you think you have crossed all T’s. But, have you censored what goes into your timeline. A social media account you use for professional purposes should be thoroughly checked for loopholes. What are friends or followers posting that could pop up on your wall which you don’t want potential employers to see? Review them regularly.
Run A Search For Yourself
You would want to see what employers see when they google search your name. Try googling yourself frequently to know what comes out of that search box for you. This would help you keep track of how professional you appear in google searches. It helps you optimize all your social media accounts in such a way that only relevant professional data will be released when someone google-searches you.
The Best Professional Social Media Platforms To Optimize
Almost all the social media platforms we have now can be used to pitch yourself professionally. However, some other platforms stand out and are safer for you to use than others.
The most important thing about maximizing an employer-friendly personal brand is to ensure that you keep things professional. There can be jokes and other fun activities but they should all be duly screened.
