Online Footprints

My Online Footprint 

Everyone googles themselves at-least once in their lifetime. If you are an avid user of popular social media sites such as facebook or twitter, those profiles are usually the first to come up. When I googled myself, my profiles for Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter popped up. I was not worried because I have always portrayed myself properly on my social media knowing that one day companies will google me if I was being considered to be hired. However, as I scrolled down I was embarrassed to see foolish projects that I did in high school posted on my youtube channel and a twitter profile based on the show "Dora The Explorer" that I had to make for my spanish class freshman year of high school.  I thought to myself, if I was an employer and saw this, what would I think? I immediately viewed myself as being seen unprofessional. I quickly deleted my youtube videos and deactivated the twitter account. When I refreshed the page and looked myself up again, I was disappointed to see that the images from the twitter account were still there. This goes to show that once you put something on the internet, it becomes hard to erase it permanently. I wish that when I was in high school I knew that this twitter profile would be stuck with me forever and has the potential of impacting my future career. Hopefully, when employers are looking more into my "personal" background online, they see that it was for a high school project from years ago. This experience impacted me in that now I am going to be very cautious on what I post on my social media, knowing that it has the potential of effecting my future career.

Good or Bad?

When companies are looking to hire somebody, one of the first things they do after viewing your resume is google you. Many people become concerned about what these companies might find,  especially from their "partying" years in college. However, others might feel as if their social media gives employers a better view of them overall as a person. A company is more likely to hire someone who has well put together profiles on the internet rather then someone who's profile consists of them partying on the weekend. Companies google you before hiring you to make sure they are hiring someone who will well represent their company both while working and not.

If your wondering what recruiter's look for when looking you up on social media, click here to find out more information.