I had the privilege of presenting at the AdClub career day last week.  There were about 70 job hunters in attendance – mostly new grads.

I shared the presentation below on how to build your brand and reputation online.  One of the main discussion areas was around Facebook – how do you manage Facebook when you leave college and enter the job-seeking world?

According to a Global Microsoft Survey:

70% of recruiters have rejected a candidate based on their online reputation?

Yet less than half consider their reputation when posting content online.

Only 15% of consumers thought that their online reputation impacted their job search.

Clearly, your online reputation is more important than you think.

The analogy I used is that Facebook is like your living room… if your boss is coming over you would probably clean up a bit.  You wouldn’t borrow another house, or totally change everything, but you would definitely clean up, and maybe even put a few things out of site.  That is how you should treat Facebook and your job search – clean up a little!

We were fortunate enough to have some recruiters in the room who told students that they will do a facebook search, and it does factor in to their hiring decision.  While they won’t specifically friend request or try to work around privacy settings, the information that you make publicly accessible on Facebook does factor into the decision.

What are your thoughts?

You can see the full presentation below.