Job Seekers, Lock Down Your Facebook NOW!

You are at a job fair. You talk to a recruiter at a dream company who later sends you a “friend request” in Facebook.

What do you do??

Not adding them could offend them. But adding them could give them access to your private data. How do you deal with this?

Because some companies and recruiters will try to “friend” you to get more information about your private life, you need to know how to add people but keep them restricted.

Follow these easy directions to do this. Do it now! The risk of potential employers discounting you unfairly because of stupid (yet private) stuff on Facebook is VERY high — chances are almost 35 percent!

Set up a friend group

I’ve set up a group called “limited access.” You can call yours whatever you want.

Change the settings for that group

Then I set the privacy settings in “limited access” so that people in that group will NOT see my wall, photos, or anything else that I deem private. You have to go into your privacy settings, choose custom settings, then add “limited access” to “Hide This From” on each part of Facebook’s features. I suggest you add “limited access” to hide from other people’s wall posts, your political views and photos you get tagged on.

Grandfather your old friends

Next, I take a look at my current friends list and see who I want to restrict access to. I add them to “limited access.”

Add them, but restrict them

If someone sends me a request and I don’t know them well, or if I don’t want them to see photos of my Halloween party, I add them, and then immediately drop them into “limited access.”

Don’t worry. They’ll never know you’ve limited them.

How do I do it?

I’ve been meaning to do a similar video to this one below. But I figure, if someone else did a good job I’ll just share it. This video will show you exactly how to set up a group and add people.

This video doesn’t show you how to change settings or add people to a group as you accept their friendship. Maybe later I’ll post a better one. But for now, this is good enough to get you started.

Joshua Waldman

Joshua Waldman is an Author, Speaker and Trainer specializing in helping people re-gain control of their careers in today’s economic and technology climate. As the author of “Job Searching With Social Media For Dummies”, he enjoys presenting keynotes and workshops on personal branding, online reputation and advanced LinkedIn strategy. With the mission of helping professionals break away from outdated and ineffective job-searching strategies, he runs CareerEnlightenment.com, a successful career blog. Joshua has been featured on ABC News, Mashable, International Business Times and Simply-Hired. For more information about Joshua or his book visit: http://careerenlightenment.com/book