A strong social media presence can be the key to employment

Whether you are looking for a career in corporate governance or information security, ensuring that you come across well on the internet is an important step in the modern age.

This is according to Ivor Kellock, an independent business and social media advisor.

He points out that while you may never have considered yourself an online star, most people these days have some kind of presence on the net and a failure to use that to your advantage could mean you lag well behind the pack when it comes to employment opportunities.

Indeed, companies are increasingly nosy when it comes to hiring new staff and will stick your name in Google and see what results they get.

If you’ve little or no online presence some employers will see this as a sign that you’ve not achieved much in your professional life and mark down your application accordingly.

By that same token, having a negative online presence can put a black mark next to your name (might be time to remove those drunken pictures from Corfu 2007 from your Facebook profile).

If no other, then one site which Mr Kellock believes you should do your utmost to maintain is a profile on LinkedIn.

“Have a properly put together LinkedIn profile to attract employers towards you,” he advised.

“Why LinkedIn? There are more than 161 Million people on Linkedin globally with more than ten million registered from the UK.

“A few quick tips to raise your profile is to make sure you have a good quality profile picture and have an attractive profile headline that says what employment you are looking for – keywords put into a sentence. Personalise your personal LinkedIn profile web address by clicking on edit next to the web address.”

He added that a good first impression is imperative and increasingly where companies make that impression is on the internet.