“Deleting old social media posts is good hygiene. If you’re hunting for a new job, you don’t want your online persona to be the reason no one hires you… When you are rebranding yourself, you don’t want to be digitally tethered to someone you used to be.” – The Wall Street Journal. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn should all be platforms that successfully reflect the person who you are today. That said, now is the time to do that social media early spring cleaning. As professionals, whether younger or more experienced, we all go through transitions and the last thing you want is for those things on social media that don’t positively reflect who you are to come back and bite you.
Instagram has provided users the ability, in bulk, to delete or archive posts, stories, videos and reels. Though Instagram is a more personal platform of interaction, it is important to know that everything being posted on this platform has the ability to go public, and companies will take advantage of that. So, take the time to go through your Instagram posts AND comments and clean up what is there. To access comments you have left on other people’s posts, tap Interactions in the Your Activity menu, then select whether you want to manage your comments, likes, or story replies. Then you can select and remove interactions more easily.
Facebook launched a manage activity function to help users remove large numbers of posts from your timeline. The activity log also has a feature for you to manage the activity that you are tagged in.
Twitter doesn’t provide a way to bulk-delete data, so this clean-up will take longer but is equally vital to your persona when applying to jobs.
LinkedIn is the professional business platform, so you may feel as though there is nothing you would need to go through and delete or clean up. But, the most important thing to focus on cleaning up is your work experience along with the ‘About Me’ section. Make this relevant and reflective of you, today. If you have work experience that is much different than the path you are currently on, clear that out and make more space for an explanation of your top few relevant roles.
It is always good to remember that with social media at your fingertips, everyone has access to information that you wouldn’t expect them too, especially future employers. So, take some time and focus on your persona and who you would like the world to know you as.
Erika Daniel serves as a Managing Director at RETS Associates, a national real estate executive search firm. She can be reached at [email protected]
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