Reading this while telling all 964 of your Facebook friends about your crazy hitchhiking adventures at Coachella? Yeah! Why wouldn’t you? After all, you totally made #lemonade out of that situation – and you deserve a break after last night’s hard work live-tweeting your BFF’s bachelorette party shenanigans, filling Instagram with questionable selfies… and putting off that list of job applications you’ve been meaning to submit.
Uh, on second thought, you may not want to press that “Like” button just yet.
They probably are watching you
According to CareerBuilder’s latest social media recruitment survey of more than 2,000 hiring managers and HR professionals and more than 3,000 full-time U.S. workers, 60 percent of employers revealed that they use social networking sites to research job candidates. This is up significantly from 52 percent last year, 22 percent in 2008 and 11 percent in 2006, when the survey was first conducted. Additionally, 59 percent of hiring managers use search engines to research candidates – compared to 51 percent last year.
And if THOSE numbers don’t make you pause before you post your victorious face next to a beer pong table scattered with empty cups, think of it this way: The number of employers using social media to screen candidates has increased 500% over the last decade. Yes, you read that correctly: 500 percent.