
By LINDA SKATES
That Facebook photo of you draped across a bar late at night, showing how much of a good time you were having, could be why that latest job application got no further than the bin.
Applicants are being warned it is now standard practice for their social media profile to be checked when it comes to assessing their suitability for jobs.
Both recruitment companies and employers will be looking at your online presence, although at different stages in the process.
Chris Kent of Hays Recruitment says job seekers need to edit what is publicly available.
“The preparation for job seeking starts with your online profile,” he said.
“Your email address that you might have set up as a backpacker travelling Europe might not be the most appropriate email for a job search.
“An email address like ‘Raving till I die.com.au’ is obviously not going to be particularly appropriate. It’s indicating that at some point in your life, [you had] a pretty strong inclination to being out all night.”
Business and finance student Alex*, who has both a Facebook and LinkedIn account, successfully applied for an internship recently at one of the big four accounting companies in Perth, and was surprised at what he was told.
“On the first day of induction, they sat us all down and said, ‘ok, we’ve seen many people not get jobs, miss out on jobs, miss out on promotions, been told the clients don’t want to work with them simply because they haven’t put their social media profile, be it Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter, to private’,” he said.