The Easiest Way To Lose Your Job

Being careless with your words on social media. Your posts on social media matter! We all know the people who use their Facebook or Instagram profiles to post about all the drama in their lives. They bash their family, co-workers and just about everything in their life.

Let me point this out real quick Facebook is not your diary! If you have a problem with someone you need to talk to them like an adult. The entire world doesn’t need to know your personal problems. I would also like to formally inform you in case no one has before that your Facebook friends don’t care. If you can’t talk to them write it in a journal, not on a public website.

What you really accomplish by talking about how horrible your job is, online is making yourself look immature and unprofessional. Not only that when you go to find a new job or go to go work with someone new your social media will be full of negative posts. I’ve had multiple employers ask to see my social media before they hired me.

There are hundreds of stories about people being fired from jobs because of posts too. If you google People fired for social media posts you’ll see what I mean. (Here’s a list of 20) It’s crazy to me how many people don’t realize that people are always watching you. I don’t mean they are are watching to catch you doing something bad. No one has time to do that. But you’d be surprised at how many people are actually paying attention to what you do online. Future employers, past contacts, people who look up to you like nieces or nephews. The words you use on social media can change how people see you in just the click of a mouse or the tap of a screen.

One way to make sure that you never have any issues with this is to think before you post anything online. If you take a second and you aren’t sure if you should or shouldn’t post what you’ve typed don’t post it. It’s not worth it. Another way is to change the way we talk altogether. The things we say on social media are often the things we’d say in real life so if you wouldn’t say out loud don’t say it online.

If you want to know more about how powerful your words are you can check out my book here.