Your social media presence can make or break your chances of landing your dream job. With over 4.89 billion social media users worldwide in 2023, whatever you post online will likely be seen by a wide audience, including potential employers.

As you prepare for job interviews, now is the critical time to comb through your social profiles and tighten up privacy settings or even delete questionable content. Let’s discuss why you need to clean up your online presence and how to undertake a social media cleanse before interviewing.

The Risks of Questionable Social Media Content

Most hiring managers or recruiters will take a quick scroll through your social media pages, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn and more to gain insight on your personality, interests, and how you present yourself professionally.

Seemingly harmless tweets, photos, comments, or other content could undermine your chances of getting hired if they reveal any of the following:

1. Controversial political views.
2. Discriminatory or insensitive language.
3. Images depicting alcohol or drug use.
4. Bad-mouthing previous employers.
5. Oversharing personal drama.

Over half of employers have found content on social media that caused them not to hire a candidate. So those late-night rants or party pics could come back to bite you.

Maintaining separate personal and professional online personas used to be advised, but today’s reality is that anything shared online under your name is searchable and visible. You have to assume that all content could be accessed by an employer.

To streamline this process and reduce the manual burden, consider using tools that auto delete tweets or periodically purge old posts. These can help you automate part of your digital hygiene, especially on platforms like Twitter, where years of content may be buried and easily overlooked. This proactive step can significantly reduce the chances of old, out-of-context content resurfacing during the hiring process.

Getting Started: Download Your Data

The first step is to download and review your own social media data. This allows you to view exactly what info is visible to the public or to someone attempting to screen you.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other platforms allow you to request and download the data they have collected on your usage, posts, interactions, and profile information. The download will likely take a few days to process, but it is invaluable in your clean-up efforts.

Here are direct links to download your data on some major platforms:

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dyi.
• Twitter: https://x.com/settings/your_twitter_data.
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/download/request/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/psettings/member-data

What to Look For When Reviewing Your Data

Once you receive your archived social data, here are some key things to review that could be potential red flags for employers:

1. Mentions of alcohol or drugs, especially in the context of illegal use.
2. Profanity, insensitive language, or disparaging remarks.
3. Content showing you violating company policies.
4. Extreme or controversial stances on political issues.
5. Confidential information from previous jobs is shown.
6. Images depicting unprofessional dress or behavior.
7. Interactions displaying aggressive or confrontational conduct.

Any posts showing illegal activity should be deleted immediately. Other grey area content should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Remember that isolated lapses in judgment won’t necessarily cost you a job, but patterns of behavior are what employers look for.

Cleaning Up Your Social Profiles

Now comes the hands-on work of removing or hiding questionable posts and tightening up your social media profiles. Here are the best practices as you tackle this project:

Delete Old Posts and Photos

Go back through your timeline as far as you’re able on each platform and remove any vulgar, inappropriate, or unflattering content. Facebook and Instagram allow you to delete posts and images. On Twitter, you can delete individual tweets, but your complete history remains part of your account data.

If you have years and years of old tweets, consider starting fresh with a new Twitter handle for your job search. Just make sure no questionable content is traceable back to your real identity.

Update Bios and Background Images

Take some time to update your profile bio, cover photos, and avatar images to align with the professional brand image you want to convey to potential employers. Remove any emojis, slang, or unnecessary personal details.

Adjust Privacy Settings

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and other platforms all allow you to customize privacy settings and limit visibility of your content to the general public. Set everything to private that doesn’t need to be viewed by employers. On Facebook, you can also restrict previous posts to friends only in the Activity Log.

Google Yourself

Type your full name into Google search (in quotes) and go through the first 5-10 pages of results. Make sure no unprofessional content appears here such as mugshots or inappropriate images. Search engines pull data from social sites as well as public records and archives.

If negative content exists on other sites, you may need to file data removal requests to de-index pages from search. This can take time, so start the process early.

Ask Connections to Remove Tags

Friends and connections may have tagged you or shared photos that reflect poorly on you. Politely ask them to untag or delete this content. If they won’t cooperate, you may have to untag or block them entirely.

Enable Two-Factor Authentication

To prevent future social media mishaps, make sure you enable two factor or multi-factor authentication on all your accounts. This requires you to enter a code from your mobile device when logging in from a new device. It adds an extra layer of security.

Google also offers an Advanced Protection Program that provides extra security for Google accounts and data.

Ongoing Social Media and Career Management

The efforts described above may take many hours to fully implement, but are necessary to pass social screening and interview successfully in today’s hyper-connected world.

Moving forward, you need an ongoing system to manage your career and social media presence in tandem long after you land your next job. 

The reality is that the internet never forgets. Any regrettable tweets, photos, or posts could resurface years down the road. But by taking proactive control of your social media reputation, you can minimize this risk and amplify your career potential.

The time investment is well worth landing your dream job and achieving career success. So secure your online presence now before your next big interview opportunity comes knocking!