The Impact of Your Digital Footprint on Job Opportunities: What Employers Really Look For
Your online presence could be affecting your job prospects. In the digital age we live in today, more and more employers are looking at applicants’ social media profiles, personal websites, and even digital portfolios. A good online presence can tell a potential employer that you have the skills and experience to do the job, and that you present yourself professionally. However, a bad online presence might lead employers to question your professional judgment and discretion.
Potential employers may look at that one dumb tweet you made and wonder if you’d be equally irresponsible as an employee. That’s why it’s essential to keep a professional online brand.
This could be as simple as keeping an up-to-date LinkedIn profile, increasing your social following on a professional Instagram account, or engaging in industry-related Twitter chats. You could also share your best work in a professional online portfolio.
Doing a regular sweep of your online image would also be a good idea. Check your online brand for any “red flags” by simply searching your name. This can tell you if you have a good—or bad—online brand, and if you need to do some work to fix it.
Understanding Your Digital Footprint
A digital footprint is the trail or "footprint" that users leave behind on the internet. It is usually split into two broad categories: "active" and "passive." Active footprints are what the user voluntarily releases into the world. This includes a social media post, a comment on a blog, or the completion of an online form. By contrast, passive footprints are what is being recorded of the user without requiring input from him or her (an active look-up). Think cookies, browser history, or location tracking with your smartphone. All this collectively paints a picture of how I behave on the internet.
Why understand this and why this matters: For one (and speaking only about one’s digital presence on the internet), your digital footprint plays a large part in defining how other people perceive you. In other words, if you are seeking to manage your reputation, especially your online, professional, or work-related reputation, you most definitely would want to care about this. In fact, if you think about it, most people, and most definitely employers, will generally be impressed with (online reputation = your reputation) or hire whoever they see on the web. And, if this is the case, you definitely want to control your reputation, because what if your Facebook or Pinterest post paints a poor image of yourself? You definitely want to select what information and image you want to show your prospective employers because you may need to manage your personal branding. One's digital footprint helps one identify things or elements in her reputation that one might have accidentally overlooked. As recent HR statistics show, more than 60% of employers "Google" candidates for red flags, so we know that our Facebook status and comments actually have an effect, while "half of all employers" will also abandon you if they find that "there’s nothing about you on the internet." Collective bargaining away from future prospective job offers? Collapse and taking a hard pass. And this is still assuming only "half" will do so. I think the majority will do so. For employers, many, elsewhere, have clearly stated the risks of social media. As in the latter article, even unprofessional words and names, any indication of sobriety, suggestive (or even negative) language, posts about guns or persons of differing "races, genders, or religions" (even if there was no such intent), will turn off "employers" and compromise one's prospects. In short, it does pay off to cover your tracks: You do not know if the picture you unknowingly clicked on—the picture from an article saying that a gang's "weapons ring" was spied on by the feds, the article about someone sharing a beer in an ad campaign, or even those negative "news" articles—will spill over and ruin life out in the real world but pulled up in your search results.
And even so, knowing one’s digital footprint is important because it lets one be in control of her internet (online) presence. By just being aware of one's digital footprint, or at the minimum, consciously asking, "Am I okay with others seeing and knowing this (tiny) piece of (personal) data?" my guess is that we will see a huge difference. Beyond creating good images for one's profile and curating one's profile, you will see that reviewing privacy settings, what items should be released on social media, and sharing a little less of everything on your try-add-everyone-and-link-all accounts—and by ensuring that it will do you ACVDEEMEN, instead of BLGIKOO—will help define you and your presence on the internet. And being able to maintain a more positive presence is itself.
Employer Expectations in the Hiring Process
Your online profiles can provide information about you that cannot be found or asked about elsewhere. For example, your LinkedIn profile may include your job history and accomplishments, and your Twitter feed may display your Tweet history and personal status updates. Additional examples include Facebook, your personal blog, and news outlets—anywhere you might have left a footprint. And remember, hiring managers also want to assess whether you will fit into their culture. Consider some of the things your online digital profile may reveal about you:
- Good things
- Personality traits
- Industry knowledge
- Bad things
- Communication skills
- Ability to get along with others
- Neither good nor bad, but fitting with your desired image
- General attitude
- Degree of professionalism
And it’s not just what you say—but also how you say it and how you interact on social media platforms. For example, on LinkedIn and on Twitter, hiring managers want to know how you connect with others and how you respond to other people and the articles they share. Good or bad re-Tweets might suggest the same kinds of things.
And don’t forget about the digital tracks that you leave online—permanently. You should consider the thousands of inappropriate faceboks and other online profiles that you set up many years ago. They won’t go away. In fact, well over 1 million additional people have searched your name online since you just started reading this article. Scared yet? Remember, it’s just not hard to do.
The Impact of Online Reputation on Job Opportunities
A strong online presence is a must in the present digital age. Even employers are taking to digital and LinkedIn to seek out their next employee. A good online profile, with the right number of skills tabulated, the experiences to go with those, and endorsements can well land anyone that next job. Also, a lot of people in industries take digi-sites like LinkedIn to catch up on industry news. So, in the comments section, I would not really want to see that one face that keeps popping up unemployed for a substantially long period of time – after all, that person does look like they know what they are talking about!
On the flip side of things, anyone who sees anything they do not like could also potentially disqualify you from the sale. There are already so many papers out there that have these potential case studies, of employers who look up their potentially-new employee before confirming the hire, by searching them up on social media sites. Anything slightly weird and off and that is your hire – that is the end for you! Take, for example, someone who has been found to have slight controversial speech regarding [insert details here] in 2011, or photos of some particularly noteworthy calamity or... anything! Anything that could affect judgment is fine to go as something worth mentioning, because if you catch the attention of your next employer with something peculiar – exactly, that person might not even be your employer anymore.
All of these things could form that sort of "bad digital impression" in the minds of people who need them. A bad digital form – not that of a literal zombie, but that of literally everything else, that is not too nice. Many people spend way too much time trying to clear up the "backlogs" of things, like trying to get that one "awful picture" off of Twitter, which became too popular and would not be able to be flagged down because of abuse, or that Instagram post with the wrong caption. A lot of things that people try and that people could always start to do. I have also realized that a lot of people try to be better stewards of their own "digital online personas" only after they have found a persona that works for them.
Personal Branding and Its Significance
With the job market being so much more competitive than ever, personal branding, in its simplest form, is the way you market yourself. To determine your personal brand, you need to do a bit of self-reflection. What are you good at (what is your skill set)? What are your values? What are you passionate about? The answers to each of these questions will help you identify what you’re offering the professional world that is different from other people. You can then take these details about yourself and turn it into a profile that tells a story about who you are—and what unique things you have to bring to the career you're pursuing.
The first place to be sure to focus this personal brand is on all of your online platforms. You need to tell the same story across each of your sites (such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and even any personal websites) to make your brand more memorable. Use, if possible, the same photograph of yourself—known as a profile picture—across all of your platforms. Write a similar bio for each online platform, and maintain a similar way of communication, which is commonly known as your "voice." Overall, decide what you want your name and online search results—what your audience first lays eyes on—to say about you.
Second, it's not enough to simply be present online in order to build a personal brand. You must also be actively engaging with your audience, or network, every so often. If you don't, you won't be making conversations—and therefore relationships—that could possibly bring you growth. You don't want to remain isolated in the digital sea. Stand out in the crowd by being a thought leader in your chosen industry. You can do this, once you identify what you're a thought leader in, by curating and sharing related content that your audience will find value in; interacting and making conversations with your network; and showcasing, in a respectful way, how much of an expert you are in your field so that more people have reasons to want to hear what you have to say and communicate with you.
The last piece of personal branding is to be sure of how credible you and your brand are, considering that lack of credibility most likely ultimately leads to the lack of trust in potential employers and/or clients. This is because they want to know that you, as a candidate or person to do business with, can do what [it is that] you say you can. So, the best things that you can do are create a positive image, or appearance, for yourself; never stop learning and getting quality education; do things in general (big or small) that you’ll be remembered positively for and want others to know you for; and refrain, generally, from posting content related to your political beliefs that may drive your potential employers and/or clients away.
Resume Screening and Digital Footprint
A candidate's online track record now plays an essential role when potential employers consider them for a role. Many employers will not only search for a candidate's LinkedIn profile but also have a nosy around their social media networks. For a lot of roles and organizations, a resume is not enough. Candidates must have an effective digital footprint. A resume can no longer be a standalone document.
Candidates must manage the information that appears when somebody types their name into Google, in order that the results presented are as professionally polished as possible. There must also be a compelling and consistent narrative. The digital footprint must simply look good and must read well. People feel positively impressed when they see it, and they expect you to deliver the goods in the flesh.
Candidates should do their utmost to develop as much of this hierarchical list of suggested LinkedIn best practices as possible. This social media profile, for very obvious reasons, ranks first. You do want everyone to think that yes, you're in the club of rich and powerful, relevant and experienced people in the know. A blog of some interesting and well-executed Tumblr posts or Medium articles about your career does, of course, also have its place.
To this end, candidates should maintain a professional forum separate to LinkedIn's glamour one, where they're free to boost what they're admittedly good at too. This is as simple as a forum where they're proud to step up to the plate and share their ideas. In fact, many candidates may be sitting on the same expertise themselves. Yes, people genuinely wish to do something useful with it.
Just the same as a resume, all other social media accounts should be scanned and cleansed periodically. Perhaps the candidates are concerned that they come across professionally and foster and protect the right sort of professional narrative—a narrative that won't cash in on their survival energy or get them in trouble, after all.
At different stages of their developing careers, candidates may wish to boost their profiles until they have exhausted yet more authors' select boxes of boost content suggestions.
In the digital age, managing your digital footprint is a must for those looking for job opportunities. Everything related to you online, and what you’ve posted, is your digital footprint—this includes social media profiles, blog posts, even comments. As potential employers are likely to do an online search, you want to be the ideal candidate that comes up. So, the first thing that needs to be done is to take a comprehensive audit of everything about you online to see how you can better align your digital footprint to achieve that bonus in your career.
Improve your digital footprint by adjusting the following:
Limit exposure for anyone who may have damaging photos of you, allowing only the following to see your posts.
Set filters for your profile photos and posts to friends-only by default.
You can limit old posts and delete any posts that you no longer think are appropriate.
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Improve your accounts Increase your digital footprint by adding to it; here are some things you might consider:
Becoming a member of a digital marketing networking site is a great way to rank your position and solidify your online presence. This also ensures that you can improve your skills.
Create a well-compiled profile on up-to-2000-word long posts.
Apply for the chance to become a professional publisher.
Don’t forget to connect where you can!
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