"online hygiene" advice you got given for applying to jobs and schools?

[FAST6191]

Saw a "delete this account" thread earlier and was reminded of the various ones we get on IRC and the like.

Anyway with so many putting all they have and more online it seems the droolers in career/job application advice places have taken to telling people to sanitise things. Doubly so as a few years back (it has since become if not illegal then very dubious in many places) potential employers were seen to be asking for logins to accounts https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/21/facebook_employer_login_request/
One of the pieces of advice, especially it seems for applying to postgrad courses of various flavours, is to essentially delete everything.

Also in play are any stories you had from promotions, interviews and the like where someone had clearly been playing private investigator ( https://gbatemp.net/threads/online-identity.379375/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrjT8m0hcKUp or just stuff like African Drug Lord). Maybe you were also in the position of being involved in employing someone and played it yourself.

 

[SG854]

That's the thing about putting stuff online about yourself. Its on their forever. I can be used against you years later and cause you problems. And may cost you your job or some other problem. People over reacting in moral outrage, and taking small minor things things most will blow off as nothing to the extreme, is another problem.

 

[Viri]

It's okay, I don't really have a social media account with my real name in the bio. And, I use a completely different email when it comes to work and school.

 

[HaloEliteLegend]

I just go by the rule of thumb of not putting anything dumb somewhere where anyone and everyone can see it. It's not that hard to do.

 

[Ryccardo]

I don't really care (though I stopped using twitter and facebook 2 years ago*): if I have to self-censor my online appearance because that's the only way to appeal to specific-someone else, the IRL relationship will probably be unappealing or even destructive as well


* mainly because I don't care about their increasingly commercial/populistic "news" feed that's not even in posting order, lame memes and almost-boob pics, messages by my mom about the new age woo of the week, their "fake" notifications like "friend X [you're not subscribed to] uploaded Y photos" if you don't get enough you asked for, ...