Bad Reputations
Angelina Jolie by Michel Bourquard, 1994
With the rise of employers screening social media profiles, you will have to give a damn about your reputation. Sorry Miss Jett, we failed you.
Social media has become the dominant mode for expressing ourselves and connecting with others, like a publicly available diary. But as it becomes our primary means of communication, more companies are evaluating the profiles of employees and potential hires for “work-appropriate content”. What’s worse, companies are willing to deny jobs if personal content is deemed unsuitable. The fact that many social media profiles are public should mean your posts are fair game. If you post uncouth or questionable content accessible to an employer, then that employer may have grounds to reprimand or fire you. Especially if your social media profile references your place of work, then they may think your posts de facto reflect the company. They can’t risk you having an opinion! Snark aside, there are some legitimate reasons for an employer to review your social media. If you are applying to a digital marketing position, for example, it’s best to provide a profile to prove your skills in content creation. If this is the case, try having a portfolio separate from your personal account. Additionally, the platform LinkedIn has become the industry standard for displaying your professional acumen. Ergo, you probably do not want to share your profanity-laden TikToks where HR can see.
But does this mean you should stop posting personal stuff everywhere? This issue is multifaceted, from free speech to panoptic surveillance, but one major problem is how our professional and personal lives are entwining to the point that even when we are off the clock, we have to keep up a professional persona. Social media commodifies persona, but this practice takes commodification to the next level. It teaches us to always be a sanitized, work-appropriate version of ourselves. As a result, we sacrifice self-expression for presentability. To combat this, you could set your accounts to private, but what’s the fun in that? Better strategies exist. Anonymity is key, so we recommend not using your legal name on any accounts you don’t want immediately found. And, Instagram recently rolled out a feature where you can set posts so only those on your close friends list can see them, giving you the best of both worlds. Unfortunately, unless corporate culture dramatically shifts in favor of privacy, we will have to care about our online presence.
