Put yourself in the shoes of someone like me for just a moment. Pretend that one of your top clients, a well-known and respected company, has asked for your assistance in finding the best candidate for a very desirable position that will be opening up. The ideal candidate will be a graduating college senior who has excelled not only academically in a specific major pertinent to the role, but who also has been involved in extra-curricular activities, and has demonstrated an acumen to excel. After some initial legwork, you start soliciting and accepting resumes from students across the country, and the pool is certain to be very competitive. Now it is not uncommon right now to have submissions for any open job end up in the hundreds, sometimes as high as 800 or more. For this case, let’s suppose 200 resumes are received. The challenge is to reduce this pile down significantly, and you do so based on factors such as highest GPA’s, outside activities, work experience and by making sure the applicant’s major is actually relevant to the position. At this point, you have now reduced the applicant pool down to the top 20 candidates on paper.
Okay, so now what? Well, this is where most of us turn to outside sources to find out more about each of the remaining candidates. The easiest way that is readily available for all to see: social media. According to a 2010 study by Cross-Tab Marketing Services, 75% of U.S. recruiters and human resources professionals reported that their companies required them to do online research about candidates. Furthermore, 70% of the surveyed recruiters said they eliminated candidates because of information found online. These are numbers that are hard to ignore, and being that this was research was conducted in 2010, I am willing to bet the numbers are higher today.
Facebook is the most mentioned culprit and offender in this scenario. If you have not taken steps to either cleaning up your Facebook profile or making sure it is set at complete privacy, you absolutely need to do so. The advantage of Facebook is the privacy feature, and most who understand the importance of using that tool have safeguarded themselves from being disqualified because of spring break pictures or questionable language. I don’t even need to bother mentioning LinkedIn, because although you should be, the majority of you are not using it, let alone posting on it. So this brings us to Twitter. Unlike Facebook or LinkedIn where typically you need to be a direct friend or connection to see what you’re posting, Twitter simply allows people to follow you – and to see all of your tweets. Now of course there is a safeguard in place that allows you as the user to lock out people you don’t want following you. But one very important thing you may be forgetting regardless of who you screen out is the use of hashtags. Once you hashtag your tweet with something like #Collegeproblems, it’s right there with the rest of the tweets for all of us to see.
The following are actual tweets from college students who have been in the running for positions. “Have been” are the key words. Jumping back to the previous scenario, if you are looking for the best candidate for your client (your reputation is also on the line), what do you think when you see regular tweets like these?:
“I haven’t accomplished anything.”
“Constantly checking my email hoping classes get cancelled.”
“10pm -- still haven't cracked open any books.”
“School tomorrow? Really?”
“Unsuccessful study day.”
“Feeling pretty careless this week.”
“Need to get back on it. I've been very unproductive since Monday.”
“I should hit the books tomorrow. But I probably won't...”
“No motivation to do anything today.”
“Homework should not be due the same night of the conference championship games.”
“I have really got to stop procrastinating.”
And my personal favorite:
“You can retake a class but can’t relive a party.”
I have limited the tweets drastically in order to keep this post at a PG rating. I’m sure you can use your imagination and visualize what the R and X versions contain. In any case, these tweets don’t really paint a picture of someone who seems terribly motivated or dedicated, do they? You can look great on paper (resume), but real life statements tell a different story. And they can work in your favor as well. Look at the difference in perception from these actual tweets:
“Waking up early to finish a paper.”
“So glad I decided to buck up and study. Sacrificed now for success later.”
“95 on my test! Glad I studied hard.”
“12 O'Clock and im just now goin to bed.. Gosh that was a lot of homework!”
The difference between both sets of tweets is that in the first, I see someone who would have a difficult time with motivation, would not be too enthusiastic about going to work, and who would struggle with procrastination. The second set shows me someone who is motivated, diligent, and willing to work for results. If your reputation is on the line, who would you choose to present to a client?
The bottom-line: be careful about what you post on Twitter (or Facebook or LinkedIn)! It may be funny now to tweet out things that get your friends’ attention, but it can hurt you when it comes time to find a job. If you need to create two separate Twitter accounts (one professional, one for fun), then do so. Just remember that we are able to learn things about people today that 6 or 7 years ago we could not have imagined. The example in this post is a scenario that occurs every single day. Don’t be the first tweeter; we are watching.
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