7 ways social media can cost you a job

Since its boom in the early 2000s with Myspace, Friendster and Facebook popping up, and while some started gaining traction and scaled, sustainability and management became the end of some like Myspace and the beginning of greater things to come for likes of Facebook.

As the years went by, social media channels have been used and abused, with some getting away with it and some others not so much.

As has been established, Social media presents two sides, good and bad, the bad easily being able to cost you a job opportunity or otherwise a job at hand.

Here are seven ways use of social media can come back and bite you in the rear figuratively speaking.

Bad-mouthing your boss online

Many out of frustration have vented their anger towards their employers, former or current. And thanks to bad gist being able to spread faster than anything else, a colleague that perhaps doesn’t like you or just wants to hold some moral standard can easily share the rants about your boss online. This could lead to termination of a job.

Also prospective employers are surfing through the web to do background checks on prospective employees, and could easily stumble upon your online activities, such as the not so flattering ones that can cast you as a bad candidate.

Complaining about a job you've just been offered

It has been seen with some millenials who go up online to tweet for example about their reservations for a job they just secured. Somehow this gets to the attention of the company, and needless to say the offer is revoked.

Using questionable language on social

Half the time it should be cool to use slangs and informal language for communicating on social media, especially with places like Twitter where you may be forced to abbreviate words and use social media jargon shorthand codes, but this could be a turn-off for employers who are looking to hire. Seems unfair but hey, it is what it is.

A Jobvite survey found that 66 percent of employers look negatively upon poor spelling and grammar on social media.

Posting unsound comments on websites

We’ve seen this over and over again on websites and social media networks, where people comment tastelessly on the subject matter being discussed. Employers will look at this and judge you for your immaturity. So change your ways and keep sentiments to yourself or go about expressing them with some diplomacy.

Posting up photos of your indulgences – alcohol, smoking etc

This may seem like a harmless social display online but when you are working for a company that is sensitive to vices like such, you may be calling for your fire. Take for example, a kindergarten teacher seen smoking once on Instagram by a parent of the child, that would likely send a wrong message, and worse off you may get reported.

Disrespecting your customers

Picture in your mind an irritated waiter making a mess of the tip she received from a customer, and recording a short video about it which ends up online, this could land her in troubled waters with her employers as that doesn’t present a good image for the company she works for.

Posting photos online while at work

This is borderline unprofessional and can easily get you fired from work, left to the discretion of the person's employers. So stay away from the Facebooks and Instagram. Visiting non-work related websites altogether during your official working hours is not advisable, it is a no-brainer.