According to several studies:
98% of HR professionals have disqualified candidates as a result of what they’ve found on social media
79% of employers do online background research on candidates
90% look at social media profiles as part of the candidate assessment process

Your social media record can be a reputational risk factor, diminishing your employability if not managed appropriately. Conversely, an impressive digital presence – or, at the very least, a neutral one – can confirm for hiring managers that you’re an exceptional talent who will be a valuable addition to their organization. 
Having no online presence can also raise eyebrows; if you don’t have a LinkedIn profile at the minimum, some companies assume a lack of digital savvy and may even disqualify candidates from the hiring process on this basis.

So how do you get started? Check out the tips that follow – plus the handy red flags you must avoid.

Do a mini-audit:

jumpstart your efforts with a very simple Google search of your name – and click on each result to see exactly what it says. What comes up when you check out the first two pages of results?
Put yourself in the shoes of a hiring manager. What would they conclude after they scanned your list of search results?

Here’s how to assess your findings:
• Visibility matters. Examine your search results carefully. Do you even come up? In the modern working world, it’s normal to have at least a few hits in search results – a LinkedIn profile, for example, or a link to a conference presentation.
• Too much information can be an issue. What happens when results surface that may be too much? Perhaps they disclose more personal information than you’d want to share with a professional contact or showcase a time or moment in your life that isn’t reflective of who you are now. Make a note of these. You may want to delete them (in the case of, say, a Facebook photo) or prepare an explanation if needed.
• Difficult to discern. Do you have a common name? f so, you’ll just need to work a little harder to set yourself apart from your digital doppelgangers. You do this by adding new content that can rank higher in search results or, if time allows, build your own website. 
• Not quite on target. Your search results might be perfectly straightforward and accurate– but do they showcase the right mix of experience, skills and personality? As a first step, update your LinkedIn profile.
• Wholly inaccurate. If you find something that could be damaging to your professional brand, know that many countries have privacy requirements that include the ability to have inaccurate content removed from websites upon request. Searching for resources around the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) are a useful place to start.

8 Red Flags That Say “Don’t Hire Me”

Avoid at all costs:
1.Extreme political views
2.Offensive content (e.g., racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, ableist, anti-LGBTQIA+) in all forms, including comments, memes, shared articles, videos, pictures and posts
3.Grammar and spelling issues – if in doubt, type into a Word document and spell check it first before copying and pasting it online
4.Obvious drug use or promotion of drug use
5.Regular use of profanity and other pejoratives
6.Falsehoods
7.Illegal activity
8.Content that could be construed as poor judgment
9.Unnecessarily negative or petty commentary (e.g., over-the-top criticism of customer service, pointing out another’s grammatical error)

Build your story:

Identify the most meaningful elements that support the next act in your professional arc. If you’re a developer, perhaps you’d highlight the latest coding languages you’ve learned and update the projects you’ve led on your GitHub profile.

Graphic designer? Build or update an online portfolio to showcase your aesthetic sensibility and how it translates to projects that drive results for clients.

If you’re in management, think through the moments in your career that exemplified your leadership ability. Did you substantially and consistently exceed revenue targets or turn around a flagging customer satisfaction score? 

Build your personal narrative around one or more of these core elements:

Experience
Experience tells a hiring manager you’ve got what it takes to deliver excellence consistently. Imagine you’re the hiring manager for the next job you want. What experiences on your resume will inspire them to see you in the role? Make sure those are prominently reflected wherever you’re updating your story, whether it’s LinkedIn or a personal website.

Remember: “show and tell.” It’s not enough to say, “I’m experienced in advertising after a 15-year career.” or “I have completed a lot of diverse projects with good results.” Demonstrate that with succinct and specific results.

Make sure your examples address:
The problem or challenge plus why it mattered: Customers couldn’t figure out our new help desk system.
Your role in handling the issue: I pulled together a 10-person, cross-functional team to explore solutions and led them in implementing a new user experience journey to make the help desk intuitive for customers.
The results: Our customer satisfaction score rose from one star to five stars in one month as a result.

Education and New Skills

Companies like candidates who have spent time enriching and building on their skill sets. This commitment to self-development demonstrates a learning mindset, rather than complacency. It suggests
intellectual curiosity, a good work ethic, and desire forcontinuous growth; qualities generally possessed by
exceptional employees.

Remember: you don’t need to have a new degree or skill-based certificate to demonstrate your commitment to building skills or deepening your expertise. Classes through resources like LinkedIn Learning, Udacity, Udemy, Coursera or your local community college are also great examples. But don’t forget to take an expansive view. Other activities count too: attending and presenting at industry conferences, starting your own professional book club, organizing or giving talks at an internal lunch-and learn series; using your professional skills in a voluntary capacity to solve a unique challenge, etc. 

Leadership Ability

Leadership ability might be difficult to quantify, but it’s something that matters deeply to organizations. Great leaders are excellent communicators, team builders and motivators, powerful strategy developers, and exceptional executors.

Remember: Instead of saying, “I’m a leader who was responsible for hundreds of employees,” think about what you did for those employees. Were you able to get great results from them that drove some business objective forward? Help them grow in their jobs? Mentor someone to success? Coach others who were struggling to achieve better performance? Provide enough detail to demonstrate what your leadership ability looks like in action (but, again, make it succinct).

Technical Acumen

Not every job requires technical skill but increasingly many do. Whether it’s data analysis or coding, Excel or InDesign, showing you understand and use the relevant technical tools and programs for your field can reinforce your suitability as a candidate.

Remember: demonstrating your technical acumen – versus just listing the technical skills you have – will catch the eye of a hirin  manager. Links to projects, online portfolios, and even simple PDFs of technical work you’ve done can all serve as compelling proof points.

Your positioning or branding statement

Now craft your positioning or branding statement (referred to as your “elevator pitch”).  Focus it on the top three things you’d want a hiring manager to remember about you (and keep in mind people’s attention spans are notoriously short).
What you need to know about a branding statement (or elevator pitch):
• It needs to work in both worlds: in written form and in conversation. (As an aside, practice it out loud in advance of an interview. Your pitch will make a great response to the classic interview opener, “Tell us a little bit about yourself.”).
• Keep it simple, informative and memorable.
• It should be personal. Not overly so, but don’t be afraid to tailor your pitch so it feels genuine to your personality and congruent with the job opportunity you’re targeting. Think about tone.

Social professional networks:

LinkedIn. Make great use of this critical platform by regularly refreshing and updating your profile:

• Visuals take a story from good to great. An exceptional profile always includes the right profile picture. Choose a photo that looks like you. Your face should take up 60% of the frame and no one else should be in the picture. Wear something simple and professional – save the crazy patterns and stick to one or two colors. Look friendly and approachable. Don’t forget to switch up the banner graphic behind your headshot, which is customizable. Use that real estate to showcase something relevant to your field; check out free graphic sites like Unsplash.com for options.
• Include a headline that draws interest. You’ll find your headline right under your name. This is the perfect place to distill your personal elevator pitch to a couple of punchy, short phrases. In the “About” section just below, you can expound on the headline in a few memorable sentences, adding in some proof points.

Ensure your profile is always current and complete. As you scan your LinkedIn profile, make sure it’s not missing any new information and totally up to date, from fully representing all your relevant positions to adding in examples of your work in the “Featured” section.
• Recommendations add that something extra. No recommendations on your profile – or only ones that reflect older positions? Just ask a couple of trusted colleagues or former managers to share their perspective on your performance and potential.
• Build community. Community comes from participation, from engagement that shows thought, courtesy, intellectual curiosity, and a genuine interest in others. Spend time each week doing the simple things that build community and strengthen your network:
• Follow, like, comment on, and share others’ content. Just make sure to keep it professional – from what you say to what you share. You don’t have to do this every day, either. A few times a week is a great initial cadence to set as your goal.
• Post content yourself. See a great news article about industry trends? Share it with a few words on what this means in your view. Just achieve a new professional certification? Let your network know.
• Join LinkedIn Groups. There is power in community and the Groups functionality on LinkedIn makes it possible to join conversations with like-minded professionals. You can elevate your expertise on various topics, build out your professional network, and learn along the way.
• Consider writing. LinkedIn offers the ability to publish articles you author. These longer-form posts are an excellent way to emphasize your expertise on specific topics. But they must answer a key question every
reader has: “What’s in it for me?” So, make sure if you write, it’s always worth their time. Proofread carefully. Grammatical errors, stylistic issues, and spelling problems will undercut the great points you’re making.

Twitter and Medium

are two other social media platforms that should be at the top of your list. With Twitter, you don’t necessarily need to tweet all the time – but a basic profile allows you to follow the companies, leaders, influencers, recruiters and job-related hashtags of interest to you. And it helps you stay on top of company news, so you’ll be well informed as you start having conversations with hiring managers. Make it easy for yourself: repurpose some of your LinkedIn profile content for the profile pic, headshot and bio.