In July, 2009 the @One organization graciously allowed me to present a webinar titled "All aTwitter about Tweets for Teaching". This series highlights their questions, and my humble attempt at answering their concerns.
Q. You can search the internet to research a possible employee. Can Twitter be used to create a personality profile of a possible employee?
A. Yes.
As with all written and verbal communication, what you say is perceived to be a projection of who you are, and it can work for you or against you. The question is not whether your online activity can be used to evaluate you, but what you are doing to promote your best self online. Let's make a digital imprint that puts you in your best light!
Unless your Twitter account is protected, your tweets are there for the world to see. Even if you choose to make your account private at some point, your previous public tweets may still show up in a search for some time. And with services like Tweleted, even your erased tweets are at risk for exposure. You should assume you have no privacy online, and that everything you type can be discovered, forwarded or undeleted. If you are concerned about your image now or in the future (and you should be!) you need to adopt habits that will ensure your digital tattoo won't haunt you at some point.
While embarrassment due to social media identity theft is a concern, by far the most damaging (and perversely entertaining) online gaffes are made by the actual owner of an account. Most of us education-types are aware of the kinds of issues that can haunt a person for a long time (plagiarism, misrepresenting facts, intolerant statements, emotional outbursts, etc.) which coincedentally puts us in a terrific position to demonstrate responsible posting practices for our students.
With Twitter, you can easily check your digital signal in three ways:
1. View your profile and review what you've posted as someone else might see it. If you aren't sure how you might come across to a potential employer, have a good friend or colleage give you an honest evaluation of your tweets.
2. Check your @replies, RTs and mentions. These can be searched quickly and easily. You may think you deleted that off-color remark, but if your followers RT'd it, it will live on in infamy.
3. Do a quick search on your name to see if anyone has mentioned you, or if there is someone who shares your name but not your values. You can't change this, but awareness is key.
Finally, be sure you are presenting yourself as a professional, integrated, polite and focused tweeter. Depending on the job you have now, or will have in the future, if your presence on Twitter shows a lack of respect toward your industry or employer, that may come back to bite you later on.
Not all HR departments are Twitter-savvy, and not all tweets live long enough to be reviewed, but if you think before you tweet and respect yourself and others, you'll be just fine.
Have you tweeted something that haunted you later on? Comment and share!
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