Social Media Tips To Protect Your Future From Your Online Past
(FortunaAdmissions) Do you have photos on your Facebook profile of you in a drunken state? Or are you tagged in a photo taken a friend’s stag night where the pole dancing was clearly taking place somewhere other than Warsaw? Perhaps after a frustrating day at work you once took to Twitter to lash out at your boss. Maybe your Linkedin profile is so empty that you actually look to be linked out?
Homer’s advice for managing your professional reputation? “#1: Cover for me. #2: Oh, good idea, Boss! #3: It was like that when I got here.”
Whether you are applying to business school or applying for a job, it might be time to review your online presence and clean up any embarrassing albums and outbursts, and demonstrate your level of professional engagement. Poor judgement online can even affect you keeping your job – just ask New York PR executive Justine Sacco about the damage you can inflict on your career by tweeting.
The growing trend for recruiters to scrutinize the social media profiles of prospective employees has also been adopted by business schools. After speaking with various MBA admissions directors, they admit that although most schools do not have an official online screening policy and process in place, certain information they find about you on the internet can influence a school’s decision on your acceptance. So if you are applying for an MBA, or a new job, it is probably a good time to consider your online brand.
Social media continues to blur the lines between our personal and professional lives, and your activities online say a lot about our identity. Consequently, business schools and employers are interested to know if the profile you present in your application and resume is consistent with your identity in the market, at your workplace, and on social media. Your online footprint should be generally consistent with how you see your personal brand.
So here are 5 social media tips to consider before clicking ‘submit’ on your MBA application:
with a Google , Yahoo and Bing search. If there are any mentions of you on the first few pages that might negatively impact your application, then it is time to remove or edit any inappropriate content. The person who was offered a job at Cisco and tweeted “Now I have to weight the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work” presumably forgot that Cisco is, well, quite engaged in the internet.
#2: If in doubt, delete. Review your history of posts, comments, and old photos on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, or any similar sites to see if you have anything viewable to the public that might reflect badly. Posts of a sexual nature, drug references, profanity, etc – may not go over well with an MBA admissions committee. While Facebook pages and Twitter profiles littered with spelling and grammar mistakes hardly inspires confidence about you as the great communicator.
Caroline Diarte Edwards, former admissions director at INSEAD explains, “Business schools are not going to screen out candidates for their political views (unless particularly extreme eg racist), for loving a good party, or for expressing the occasional gripe. On the other hand, admissions committees might raise an eyebrow if, for example, you have frequently expressed job frustration or if there is anything that suggests unprincipled behavior, such as making public fun of a colleague, or gloating about having hoodwinked a client.”
As a colleague at Fortuna Admissions, where we consult with clients on MBA applications, Caroline remembers a client who was out of work and had written on her blog about how she felt like a no-hoper. “Of course everyone can have moments of feeling down, but you do not want such statements to be viewed by the admissions office. So we advised her to delete that particular blog post.”
# 3: Make sure your LinkedIn profile is up-to-date and that you have joined the groups of the business schools you are applying to. You can take a step further and join the groups that are driving the debate in fields that you claim to be passionate about, such as impact investing, renewable energy or social enterprise. Schools also expect you to be a good networker, and having a well-developed LinkedIn profile can help to convey this image to an admissions committee. And don’t forget an appropriate photo – the school can already start to picture you in their own yearbook.
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