Social Spring Cleaning

Today’s job market is a cut-throat, take no prisoners sort of a place where many are finding it increasingly difficult to get their foot on the working ladder, especially the younger generation. The common reason everyone cites for this dilemma is the economic climate that we, and most of the rest of the world, find ourselves in. For me this is not the sole reason, I believe there is another significant contributing factor: our personal online presence.

The number of Facebook users in the UK recently topped 25 million and is steadily climbing towards the 30 million mark. Of these users around 80% are aged 18 or above and under 10% are 50+, this means that at least 18 million people of working age are represented on Facebook not including those who use other social media sites instead such as Myspace or Twitter.

Many employers use the social network sites we frequent to research potential employee’s habits, ‘friends’ and any other information available, and don’t think you can hide behind your security settings as there are many ways around them. According to a survey undertaken by CareerBuilder.com as many as 45% of employers have used social media sites to analyse job candidates and 35% have discounted a candidate because of what they have seen. In the vast majority of cases applicants are at no point informed he or she may be judged by what lurks in the deepest darkest recesses of their social network pages.

In many cases, including my own, we join a social media site and then, after a few years, when something more contemporary, usable or modern comes along we slowly forget and discard our old profile pages. Before long they end up usurped and left all alone like that second generation iPod you got for Christmas in 2003. Much like our abandoned music players our old social media accounts often contain things we would now be highly embarrassed of (All the Things She Said – T.A.T.U. anyone?) but, unlike our iPods, these embarrassing aspects of our past are plastered across the internet for any Tom, Dick or Human Resources to see. It is not just our old accounts that are to blame either, however clean you may think your current profile is there is undoubtedly something hidden away somewhere which could count against you. This can range from forgotten groups you joined in a moment of madness (or weakness) to wall posts from friends.

There are numerous web articles out there giving instructions on how to clean up your profile in preparation for job searching but some things you cannot control and some you just simply cannot find. There are also companies that will manage your online reputation, such as Brandwatch.com, Reputation247.com, Reputationmanagement.me and Reputationmanagementconsultants.com. These, however, are aimed more towards businesses and higher profile business people and will charge you for their services. For a less in-depth approach that will be more than adequate for most job seekers sites Brand-yourself.com and Socioclean.com will do it for free.

Brand-Yourself.com is centred more around creating a clear brand for yourself online than a quick clean up of your social media pages. However, it can be very useful for new graduates or those looking to make a place for themselves in the business world. For a simple spring clean type approach Socioclean stands alone. Socioclean “crawls through your Facebook profile photos, groups and wall posts, and alerts you to anything inappropriate.” The site scans your profile, checks your information and returns a grade, with A being the best you can hope for, and a Reputation Risk Gauge indicates the probability someone will see inappropriate content when browsing your profile. Having thought my Facebook profile was relatively respectable I ran the test and was mildly shocked when Socioclean returned a grade of F and a Risk Gauge reading of ‘Severe’! Fortunately Socioclean’s standards are very high and I think many of the things it found could probably go unchanged but it was at least good to see the offending articles and have the option to remove them as you wish.

Currently Socioclean is only available for Facebook but plans to branch out to other sites are in motion. This means, at least to some extent, we can take control of our online presence and consequently is a step toward a future of safer and more secure social media, and that certainly can’t be a bad thing.