By Kiersten Finch
Social media has become a major aspect of our everyday lives. We portray just about every detail of our personal lives on a variety of platforms. However, should we be judged on what we put out there for future employers to see, or should it just stay in our personal lives?
A future employer’s biggest fear is failure. When a company hires you, your actions represent them, good or bad. It is crucial to have a perfect image; otherwise, it may cost you your job. Because of this, it is only common sense that your social media profiles do the same.
When projecting yourself all over the Internet, you should think very hard about how you’re portraying yourself. Employers have every right to look into the social media accounts of their prospective employees in order to get a better glimpse into the people that they truly are. If a future employee is judged poorly based on what they’re displaying and saying on social media, one could infer that the employee could make bad judgments within the company as well.
Regardless of your freedom of speech, what you say can have a permanent impact on those around you, whether or not that was your intention.
Everyone has the right to say and believe whatever they want, but once a message is put out on the Internet, it will remain there forever because there is no way to permanently remove it. After a post is made on a website such as Facebook, it is no longer your private life. You are displaying information for everyone to see; therefore, even your boss has access to it.
Due to the fact that you are choosing to post your life out on the Internet, your employer isn’t even invading your personal life or your privacy. You are the one putting it out there to be viewed by anyone.
Some jobs even require you to follow their social media accounts and post on them, depending on your position. When applying for a job that may require this, it may be better to create a separate social media profile that is strictly for professional purposes that don’t involve your social life.
If your personal profiles are public, it may benefit you to make them private and possibly even go by a pseudonym if you don’t want companies to be able to find you and look into certain aspects of your personal and social life.
Although there are some ways to make your profile private and even hide it from employers, whatever you put out on the Internet will stay there for anyone to be able to see until the end of time.
So, it is wise to always keep in mind that if you don’t want someone to see something that you posted on social media, then don’t post it in the first place. Social media posts can have detrimental effects on your future career, success, and life.
