9 Things Recruiters Hate to See on Your Social Media
It is no longer news that recruiters check the social media profiles of job applicants as part of the recruitment process. So what kind of social media content would drive a potential recruiter away from a candidate?
Based on 5 years of research on social recruiting by Jobvite (see full reports from 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016), we present below the top 9 things that recruiters view negatively on job applicants’ social media profiles.
- Drugs
A total of 78% of recruiters in 2012, and 83% in both 2013 and 2014, reported that they would react negatively if they discovered references to illegal drugs on a candidate’s profile. In 2015 and 2016, Jobvite asked recruiters about their impressions regarding the display of Marijuana use in particular on social media, and 75% and 71% respectively answered that they viewed them negatively.
- Sexual Content
The majority of recruiters (66%, 71%, and 70% of the professionals surveyed by Jobvite in 2012, 2013, and 2014 respectively) said that posts of a sexual nature would make a bad impression on them. Jobvite provided no data on this type of content in the past two years.
- Spelling Mistakes
Typos have increasingly irritated recruiters. In fact, from 2012 to 2016, the percentage of recruiters who reported negative impressions associated with grammar and spelling mistakes increased from 54% to a whopping 72%.
- Profanity
Profanity is another thing that a large percentage of recruiters dislike to see on job applicants’ social media profiles. In numbers, 61%, 65%, and 63% of recruiters surveyed in 2012, 2013, and 2014 respectively, gave a negative assessment to profanity. Jobvite omitted to ask recruiters about foul language in 2015 and 2016.
- Oversharing
This is another pet peeve for recruiters, as reported by 60% of the surveyed professionals in 2016, although it is unclear what extent of sharing crosses the line in this context. The question about this behavior was not included in the Jobvite survey in earlier years.
- Guns
Slightly more than half (51%) of the surveyed recruiters by Jobvite reported negative impressions about photos of guns on social media in 2013 and 2014. No further data is available about how the perceptions of recruiters might have changed in the past couple of years.
- Alcohol Consumption
In 2016, almost half of the surveyed recruiters (47%) reported having negative impressions about job candidates who posted photos of alcohol consumption on their social media profiles. Interestingly, recruiters from the Millennials’ generation were relatively more tolerant of alcohol photos, as only 37% of them viewed this content negatively compared to 63% of recruiters aged over 65.
Overall, alcohol does not seem to be popular among recruiters, as an important percentage of them reported bad impressions about it over the years (47%, 44%, and 54% in 2013, 2014, and 2015 respectively).
- Overtly Religious Content
This is a sensitive type of content that does not necessarily appeal to all recruiters. A total of 26% and 28% of surveyed recruiters in 2012 and 2013 respectively associated negative assessments with religious content when found on candidates’ profiles. No data is available about their perceptions in subsequent years.
- Selfies
An interesting type of content that Jobvite has started including in their annual survey in the past couple of years is selfies. In 2015, 25% of recruiters reported negative feelings about selfies. In 2016, however, that percentage dropped to 18%, showing that selfies are being more and more accepted among recruiters.
With this knowledge in mind, social media users can choose to either 1) adjust their privacy settings in a way that does not let recruiters peek into their profiles, or 2) work on their personal branding on social media by avoiding these 9 types of content in order to stay on the good side of potential recruiters.
Whatever a job seeker does, it would be better than not having a social media profile at all, as that absence was reported as a negative sign by 33% of the surveyed recruiters in 2015, especially in the marketing and communication fields. This result is in line with the study that found that a social media hiatus would probably hurt one’s job search.
And remember, recruiters are more appalled by your grammar mistakes than by your alcohol-featuring pictures!
Would your current public social media profiles be attractive to potential recruiters or do they contain some of the above-mentioned types of content? Let us know in the comments’ section below.
