Top 5 Social Media Etiquette tips

Many of us spend a lot of our lives on the internet these days. Whether for shopping, schooling, work, or just for fun. How we behave, particularly on social media platforms, is fast becoming an important part of getting a job and building a career.

Social media etiquette can be tricky as there are a lot of unwritten rules. But if you follow our 5 tips below you can be sure you are putting your best foot forward when going for that next job interview.

1. Be Respectable

In all your public interactions you should make sure you are polite and respectful to people, particularly when you disagree with them. Use of offensive language, especially if it is consistently through your interaction’s and profile, will turn off employers pretty quickly.

Even more so for anything that could be deemed to be sexist, racist, homophobic, or discriminatory in anyway. You and your friends might think its an edgy joke, potential employers might see it in a very different light.

2. Spellcheck and Grammar

While it might be convenient to fire off a quick response while you are watching TV, it can hurt your job prospects not spell checking. It is generally the biggest turn off for HR and Hiring managers and is an easy fix.

Ensuring that what you write makes sense and conforms to grammar rules is pretty important too. Especially if part of your job involves communicating with customers and colleagues. It’s not expected that you would have perfect prose but spend a little time and just have a quick read before you tap send!

3. What You Post

Photographic evidence of your weekend adventures is great to share with friends but if they are plastered all over your profile they may turn some employers off. Again, its about being respectable. If you have an active social life that’s great, just maybe don’t post the pictures that were taken in the early hours of the morning.

4. Complaining

If your social media profiles are filled with complaints about your boss, it isn’t going to inspire confidence in you from prospective employers. Whether your complaints were legitimate or not, hiring managers might see someone that lacks accountability.^[1]

So too for customer complaints. Businesses do not want to hire staff that will reflect poorly on their brand and insult their customers so maybe save your gripes for private conversations.

5. Make Your Profiles Job Ready

Having a friendly picture and keeping your profile private are the two simplest ways of tidying up your profiles. At the very least this is what you should do for all social profiles.

It would be worth it to do an online audit of yourself too. Simply search for your name in google and see what pops up. Deleting unused and potentially embarrassing accounts mean you have one less thing to worry about.

Shy away from posting controversial content and follow the other tips above and you should have a nice clean profile that wont cost you any marks when the time comes for that next interview.

If you have a LinkedIn profile you can also find more specific tips in our article on how to craft a successful LinkedIn profile. 

REFERENCES:

https://www.jobvite.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Jobvite-RecruiterNation-Report-Final.pdf