3 Facebook Career killing Mistakes to avoid.

“Mark!! Always remember that the internet is written in indelible ink.” So goes a line in a movie, ‘The Social network’, which depicts the early days of Facebook. In the movie, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s girlfriend- Erica Albright- shouts at him for posting her picture online. While the Facebook mistakes may probably not make your girlfriend to leave you, as Mark’s did, it could just as well get you fired.

Many employers are using Facebook to screen potential employees and do background checks, more than

they rely on referees and former work colleagues. Some have even created a Facebook page to assist them interact better with future prospective job seekers. Here are three Facebook mistakes that you can easily avoid in order to push your career forward.

1. Complaining about Your Current Job

It could be a full note about how much you hate your office, or how incompetent your boss is, or it could be as innocent as a status update about how your coworker always shows up late. While everyone complains about work sometimes, doing so in a public forum where it can be found by others is not the best career move. Although it may seem innocent, it's not the kind of impression that sits well with a potential boss - or a current one for that matter.

2. Keeping a False Profile Information

We live in an age of instant gratification, and we all want to appear like we have it all. If we see our friend posting that they have just shopped at a mall in Westlands, we also want to follow up with an equally captivating update. However, presenting yourself as someone you are not will likely backfire, and might be captured during the interview stage if you are lucky enough to get past the screening of the CVs.

3. Uploading provocative photos.

course, we all have that photo we would want to share with our friends. It’s one reason why websites like instagram exist. However, if you also hope Facebook to help you in your job search, you should limit the people who get to see your photos, by making use of the privacy settings. Alternatively, you could also create two Facebook accounts, one for professional use, and another one purely for your personal use to interact with friends and loved ones.

The professional one could be your version of online CVs, and you could then sign into and like pages of your mentors, public figures you admire, job sites, and companies- hopefully the ones you hope to be your future employers- you would want to get constant updates from. With just a little creativity, you could use Facebook for both social interactions and enhancing your career.