Mediaboss Marketing

Employers continue to turn to social networking sites to find additional information on potential candidates and theyre not entirely impressed with what theyre seeing. A new survey from CareerBuilder.co.uk found that 55 per cent of employers who research job candidates on social media said theyve found content that caused them to not hire the candidate.

Forty-eight per cent of employers currently use social networking sites to research job candidates. Additionally, 12 per cent of employers that dont currently research candidates on social media plan to start.

Employers arent limiting themselves to just social networks when it comes to researching a candidates web presence. Half (50%) of employers use search engines such as Google to research potential job candidates, with 21 per cent saying they do so frequently or always.

So what are employers finding on social media thats prompting them to eliminate candidates from consideration? The most common reasons to reject a candidate included:

However, one third (34%) of employers who research candidates on social networking sites say theyve found content that made them more likely to hire a candidate. Some of the most common reasons employers hired a candidate based on their social networking presence included:

Its important for job seekers to remember that much of what they post to the Internet and equally importantly, what others post about them can be found by potential employers, and that can affect their chances of getting hired down the road, said Rosemary Haefner, Vice President of Human Resources at CareerBuilder. Job seekers need to stay vigilant, and pay attention to privacy updates from all of their social networking accounts so they know what information is available for others to see. Take control of your web presence by limiting who can post to your profile and monitoring posts youve been tagged in.

Haefner recommends the following DOs and DONTs to keep a positive image online:

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More than half of employers have rejected an applicant due to social media posts, according to new CareerBuilder.co.uk ...