In today’s world, social media has become an inseparable crutch to many. We have been able to seamlessly integrate it into our daily lives. It allows us to connect with family members who we may not see all the time, with friends who are living and working abroad, join groups with similar interests, we can share opinions and catch up on the latest news around the world. There are so much more but we’d be here all day.

One application of social media that Job Coconut is particularly interested in is how Social Media has joined the many channels used who a job seeker goes looking for jobs. Social Media is a great way to target jobs towards those passive job seekers i.e. a person who is not actively looking for a job but could be swayed if the right job came along.

There are specific groups and pages now made on the likes of LinkedIn, Facebook and Xing for those looking for certain jobs and these are all based on either language, location or the type of jobs. In today’s market Job Seekers have quite a bit of power, but we feel that one crucial factor has been over looked.

The fact that recruiters and employers have instant access to nearly anyone’s online profile. At Job Coconut we don’t want you to lose out on an amazing job opportunity abroad just because of a certain picture that popped up over the weekend or something funny you may have shared that isn’t all that appropriate. What we’ve done below is set up a guide on how prevent your online profiles from losing some great opportunities abroad for you.

Here We Go:

Early on

Make the decision early on before you actively go on your job search about how you want to treat all of your online profiles. Adjust privacy settings, decide whether or not you will friend colleges and/or your boss – because posts and pictures might come back to haunt you. When it comes to professional profiles – by all means add those at work – it can only help you online status but when it comes to behind closed doors – Make the call early on.

Divide & Conquer

First of all, you will want to separate your personal and your professional lives. We can’t always stop pictures and post about us from popping up ‘’Friends will be friends’’ so the best thing you can do to keep possible recruiters and employers from seeing such profiles is:

• Using a nickname on personal online profiles

With professional profiles you will obviously want your profile to be easily found, use your full name, share and like things that will help you increase your chances of grabbing a recruiter’s attention. Basically keep the puppy videos to Facebook.

Stick with who you know

It’s always great to expand your network. On your personal profiles, it’s always a good and safe option to only friend who you know but when it comes to the likes of LinkedIn and Xing it can be a good idea to research and look into who you may be connected with. Think to yourself ‘’Can this help me in my career’’ – ‘’Will this person be a valuable asset to my future career or an aid to getting me to where I need to go’’.

You are what you post

Be careful on what you post – if you have friended your boss and fellow work colleagues – they can see what you post. Perhaps you had a bad day and decided to rant about where you work, maybe you took a sneaky day off to hang out with friends. Be careful – people have lost their jobs this way. Anyone remember in 2011 when a ‘Glee’ member was fired after tweeting some spoilers about the next episode of the show?

These are the top 4 tips we can give to help you keep control of your job search, to avoid losing out on some amazing job opportunities – To ultimately control Social Media in a beneficial way for you.