Beer pitcher hats make bad job search accessories

You may not be using social networking as part of your job search strategy. You really should be, and we'll talk a whole bunch about why and how coming up here. But today's key point is this:

Your potential employer is. The recruiters working with them are.

Simply put, we seeeeee you. The good, the bad and the ugly.

Thus, I will offer a series of really obvious tips. If you're serious about that search:

1. Remove the picture of yourself wearing an empty beer pitcher hat from your Facebook profile, ESPECIALLY if you failed to update your privacy settings a month or so ago, when Facebook "simplified" things for all of us ( http://bit.ly/dCDQXe).
2. Don't, under any circumstance, tweet about how much you love beer bongs, strip clubs, pot or instigating bar fights.
3. Bad idea to make your Facebook status update an announcement about how much you hate your current (or hated your last) job, boss and/or co-workers.
4. It's time to take down the YouTube videos of you lighting your bodily gas, showing your boobs at Mardi Gras, harassing your cat, or stealing Big Bites from 7eleven at 2AM.
5. Consider cleaning up your personal blog if you've got one. The tone and content you use might be endearing to your friends and casual followers, yet a deal breaker for a potential employer who finds it.

Of course, most of this cleanup is probably very doable if you take the time to google yourself and see what's out there. If you think you need to call in the pros, there are fee-based services like Reputation Defender that will do it for you.