At the dawn of each new semester, I can always expect the typical syllabus rundown followed by a lecture about why we should and shouldn’t post about our nights at City Limits or Bar C. Quite frankly, if you asked me what I’ve learned over the past two years I could only tell you the difference between angiosperms and gymnosperms. The most important nugget of information that college has provided me is that anything you put on the internet will never go away. Although this information has been etched into our impressionable minds since before we even knew what social media was, it now feels like a way of life. The idea that I might not get hired simply because I liked a TikTok of a child being pushed off a couch is mortifying. It is important, however, to know what jobs screen and which ones do not.
Many can rightfully argue that basing one’s future solely on their social media posts is wrong. It can be deemed an invasion of privacy and so on and so forth. Most businesses even go as far as checking the posts you’ve liked. Is that fair? Simply liking a post can now affect your ability to get a certain job. The way you live your life outside of work should be your own business. However, there are many instances where people are hired to work jobs that they do not have a passion for. For example, my comfort movie is Matilda. If you’ve ever seen this 90’s classic, you know that Trunchbull was the meanest, nastiest principal ever. Her entire personality was centered around the fact that she hated children. If she would have had a Twitter account, I assume it would have consisted of a series of tweets about how children are “all mistakes”. Her hatred for children poured out into the workplace and the children were miserable under her instruction. Although Matilda is a movie about a young girl who obtains power through her love of reading, the most accurate scene in the movie was any scene that showed Trunchbull’s hate for children.
There are a multitude of professions that screen prior to hiring. I know as an education major that the tweets I like and the TikToks I make need a serious look over. Time and time again I hear professors tell us to be careful about what we post! So hear me out. If you are an education major, nursing major or anyone that falls under the criminal justice field, you will be screened and you need to start monitoring your own social media accounts. Even though most tweets and posts seem relatively harmless, every meme or TikTok you like and share can greatly impact your future.
“I do not like the idea that school district’s will be checking my social media accounts before interviewing me. What I do in my personal life does not and will not affect my overall work ethic. Therefore, it is a breach of my privacy. If it was that important to them, I could just make my accounts private and out of the reach of students,” interdisciplinary early childhood- 6 major, Ronique Caldwell said.
“I think it just depends on what hospital you’re working for I know there’s different hospital corporations who lean towards the more religious side of things and so I know those have been the ones to check your social media more vigorously whether as the hospitals that I’ve worked at haven’t really gone through the time to check my social media but I have had to sign policies that say I’m gonna keep my social media clean,” nursing major, Ivan Anaya said.
“I think it’s a great idea, it shows character on how someone is doing outside the job, you don’t want someone putting a bad name on your business. It’s a lot more professional if you keep your actions outside of work and social media respectfully and without issues,” Phillip Lejeune said.
These are deemed the best four years of our lives but it is important to remember that everything you do in college follows you into the real world. With that being said, never post anything you wouldn’t want your grandma, your pastor or your parents to see. Also remember that each job screens differently based on the job position you are being hired into. Nobody wants to see their kindergarten teacher recklessly driving through a school zone or their local security officer doing illegal acts to impress his or her friends.
Always be smart and always stay safe. Most importantly remember that no night at Bar C or City Limits is worth losing an internship or job opportunity that you have worked for years to earn. Do not allow a 15 second TikTok video, “relatable” tweet or racy Snapchat video end your career before it even begins. Start as early as sophomore year running a fine tooth comb through all of your social media accounts and ask yourself if it’s worth the risk. We are the in the age of technology but that does not mean that we should allow it to consume our lives by overposting and oversharing. If you would be embarrassed to show your granny, delete it! Remain mindful and keep working hard, Texans.