If you tuned in to our Social Media Declutter Challenge Part 1, you should be feeling pretty good about your Twitter profile right now. You did-away with any random political/religious/plain stupid rants, noticed more grammar mistakes than you’d like to admit – and fixed them, removed any unwanted photos, and maybe decided to make your page private all together…
After removing the skeletons from your Twitter closet, it’s time to turn to Facebook. Facebook is a bit more involved than Twitter as you might still be tagged in your friend’s last-week-of-college pictures you wouldn’t want any hiring manager to see. You might also have a cover photo hidden deep down in your stack that, while once was a witty reference to drinking and patios, now just makes you look super unprofessional. So, let’s get started…
Step 1
Remove your Facebook page from search engines. You can hide your profile from search engine results by going into Settings, and selecting “Privacy” on the left side of the screen. The last question posed is, “Do you want search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile?” If you answer “No” to this, you should no longer show up when you Google yourself.
Step 2
Onto the photos. In the Photos section of your profile, there are three tabs. “Photos of You,” “Your Photos,” and “Albums.” Start in the “Photos of You” section and untag yourself from any photos you feel are inappropriate for a hiring manager’s eyes. This is the most important section, because even if you make your page private, someone could still come across a tagged photo if you are tagged with someone they know.
The “Your Photos” section is going to have the pictures you’ve added through the years as one-offs, not full albums so breeze through and make sure you didn’t post a happy-hour-driven, but not appropriate for work pics at some point. The “Your Albums” sections will have likely the oldest photos in it, because long before instagram, you would upload mass pictures as full albums to Facebook. This one is easy because you can just make the whole album private and call it a day.
Step 3
Take a hold of your timeline by making sure your friends and really, really distant relatives don’t put anything on your wall you don’t want there. To manage your timeline, go to Settings, select “Privacy” and then click on the second tab down entitled “Timeline and Tagging.” Here, you can set a timeline review so that you can approve of anything your friends tag you in before it posts to your wall.
You can also limit who can see certain things, down to specific people and groups of people. This can keep your boss or coworkers from seeing certain posts should you become Facebook friends someday.
After you have completed steps 1-3, you should have a fully future-boss-appropriate Facebook profile, and if you missed anything, they will at least have a little trouble finding you there since you no longer show up in Google results.
Now, you should feel really, really good!