Facebook and The Job Search

Mind your Facebook profile, job searchers. It’s advice I’ve given before, and advice the best recruiters and HR professionals in the business stick to when asked about candidates. What you put on social media can absolutely affect your chances at being chosen to interview, and can definitely affect whether or not you are hired. If the choice is between a professionally presented social media personality and one riddled with photos of beer cans and bikinis, it’s pretty clear who a hiring manager might choose.

But now, for the first time, scientists are proving that not only does Facebook affect your ability to get the interview or the job, those assumptions and stereotypes are valid and correct. It’s true, in fact, that candidates viewed as “less desirable” based on their social media pages are actually a strong reflection of their job performance once hired. It’s not a far stretch, if you ask me. Someone whose priority is posting undesirable photos and messages on Facebook would be less likely to perform well on a job than someone who posts thoughtful, industry inspired information.

But don’t take my word for it, it’s a study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology that makes the case with scientific evidence and presents that case in a recent Forbes article. Check it out here, and once again, think hard about whether or not your Facebook page says the right thing about you!