Managing Your Online Reputation

Like it or not, social media is the new normal. These platforms have become so embedded in our culture, it’s challenging to navigate our personal and professional lives without them. The tradeoff, however, is privacy.

Every social media platform allows users to share one another’s content, regardless of our individual privacy settings. Therefore, we have no control over where our content ends up once it is shared on other users’ Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn feeds. What we do know, is as the originator of a post, your identity will always be tied to the content every time it is shared.

When utilizing social media professionally, it is important to manage your personal accounts and. Think twice before posting anything on social media which may be perceived as unprofessional. Search yourself online (because recruiters and companies probably will) to see what prospective employers might find and clean up your social media accounts as needed.

TIP: The Google search command “site:” allows you to search a specified website. To search Facebook, for example, the site command would be: “jane doe” site:facebook.com.

Be sure to log out of all social media accounts before searching.