Facebook’s New Feature Makes It So Important To Clean Up Your Profile

First, Instagram turned into Snapchat, and now Facebook is turning into...LinkedIn? Yesterday, the social media network announced that employers in the U.S. and Canada can post open positions, which job seekers can find on a company's page or in the new Jobs bookmark on Facebook. "It's early days but we're excited to see how people use this simple tool to get the job they want and for businesses to get the help they need," said Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, VP of Business and Platform at Facebook, in a statement about the release. Companies have been quick to catch on. My Jobs page, showing openings at places nearby, has over 50 listings, including everything from a position as a barre instructor to one as a manager of global trade operations at a consulting firm. Now, for the fine print. You've probably been warned in the past that you should be careful about what you post online, since employers will often glance at your profile. But applying for jobs on a site that has largely been used in the past for socializing, makes exercising caution all the more important. Employers will only be able to see the information you have provided in your application and that which is public on your Facebook profile. If you want to see what others see when they go to your account, open your Facebook page on your desktop and click the ellipsis next to "view activity log" on your cover photo. Then, tab down to "view as." It's also worth doing a Privacy Checkup to ensure that your posts and photos are visible to friends only, unless you're okay with employers seeing red solo cup shots from your college days. Facebook also advises taking a look at the pages you have liked in the past to make sure they are ones that reflect you well. Your profile picture is the first impression an employer gets of you, so you probably don't want yours to be a photo of you smoking a bong — just saying. There are some benefits to seeing job postings on Facebook, namely that you can easily send a direct message to an employer and join networking groups, such as The Entrepreneur Incubator and Gay Professionals. But it also feels odd to merge a social space with one that is professional. That's why LinkedIn has been so successful. It created a community for networking online, but still separated work from play. LinkedIn is unlikely to go anywhere anytime soon, but it will be interesting to see where Facebook fits into the job marketplace moving forward.