Social Media can really damage our careers and this is due to how our online profiles appear. LinkedIn generally has a professional look and if our LinkedIn profiles do not look professional, we should really look into to correcting this. However, the more social platforms of Twitter and Facebook give a real insight into our private lives and this could be a problem for an employer doing a background check.

Background checks after job interviews

Employers are increasingly doing background checks of their potential employees through social media and in particular Facebook. However, the privacy options can protect your Facebook image to a level. Twitter is also a problem as your profile is often more visible.
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Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net and author digitalart
 
What are the issues that can put off an employer, naturally the main offender are the pictures from big nights out. They can give the wrong impression and can be quite damaging.
However, you can protect yourself from this danger. One easy way is to increase your privacy on your social media profiles. This is rarely done by people, but is worth it. Remember you can do this on both Twitter and Facebook. Another solution is to change your name to an alias, so that future employers will never be able to find you using your name.
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Danger of Social Media for jobseekers

However, there are other background checks to be aware of and these include employer reference checks, academic and credit ratings. You should be sure that any previous reference checks will come
back positive, as now background checks are very intense and too many people fail to gain employment due to an issue on references. Credit is an issue for some people too and employers will often do a check on your credit rating. If you have an issue that is not your own fault, such as a shared address or previous occupant at your residence having an issue, you can check this out. If you encounter an issue, there are options to preserve your own rating and correct the problem.
 
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