Social Media and the Modern Job Search

By Zephy | Yahoo! Contributor Network

Sometimes it felt like I was searching and searching for a job and yet getting nowhere. I was without a job for about three months after my past job ended. The good thing about it was I was still in school pursuing a teaching degree.

I finished college within the three months of being jobless and was off to start looking for a teaching position. To my surprise I landed an interview almost instantly. Anyway, I spoke with the hiring manager over the phone to set-up an appointment and to go get the necessary medical records, background check, and physical. Everything checked out find and I before I knew it in about three weeks I was sitting in a class of 30 other individuals all pursuing a job as a substitute teacher or a teacher.

We all sat in the class hearing speeches from upper management about the do's and don'ts of the job. But, the one thing that I caught my attention was the process of actually being hired and how they had chosen each of us to be a part of the class. We were told that before our applications were considered even after turning in the booklet of an application, background check, and medical records our names were entered into a search engine like Google, Yahoo, or AOL to find out what information was available on us before being hiring.

And, if as that was not enough we were than searched out on social media networks like: FaceBook, MySpace, and BlackPlanet, just to name a few. The employer said that they were looking to see if we had any pages on these network sites and if so what type of pictures were posted, if the page security was set to public or private and they even stated that they read the most recent and oldest post to see what type of language that we were using on the sites.

So the next time you are out looking for a job make sure that if you have any social media accounts that they are set to private. This will eliminate what the potential employer can see about you. It will also show them that you aren't a very public person and that you take pride in your personal property and information.

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http://finance.yahoo.com/news/first-person-social-media-modern-job-search-133600918.html