How Job Seekers Can Share on Facebook

By Joshua Waldman from Job Searching with Social Media For Dummies

Sharing settings relate to how you interact with Facebook. As a serious job seeker, you want to understand every detail of what’s being shared and with whom. This category allows you to control who can view (and comment on) the various tidbits you decide to reveal about yourself.

It also allows you to restrict who can see the comments other people post on your Wall and what they tag you in.

You can’t always control what your friends post, so you want to be extra careful with these settings.

Facebook offers a Recommended setting so users who don’t want to spend much time on managing each and every privacy setting can simply choose their comfort level and be done. However, opting for Facebook’s generic Recommended setting isn’t good enough.

From the Choose Your Privacy Settings page, click on the Customize Settings link under the Sharing on Facebook category.

Customizing What You Share
The What	The Recommended Setting	The Why
Posts by you	Friends and Networks	If your post is seen by a friend’s friend and members of any Page you “like,” you want your personal brand to be communicated widely, so make sure your Wall posts are appropriate and that they communicate your brand. (Remember that you can always adjust the privacy of each individual Wall post later.)
Family	Friends Only	You don’t need recruiters knowing the names of your parents, siblings, and other relatives.
Relationships	Friends Only	Who you’re dating and whether you’re married is too much information for non-friends, in my opinion.
Interested in	Friends Only	Whether you’re interested in boys or girls has little bearing on your employability. Too bad you can’t choose “I’m interested in a job.”
Bio and favorite quotations	Everyone	Your bio and quotes can be keyword-rich value propositions that you want associated with your brand. No reason to hold this one back from the masses.
Website	Everyone	Include your LinkedIn profile and any other websites associated with you, such as your blog or online résumé. Doing so gives recruiters a chance to learn more about you.
Religious and political views	Friends Only	Always avoid religion and politics in professional settings.
Birthday	Friends Only	You want to be really careful with your birth date. It’s one of those pieces of info that’s often used to verify identity, which means it’s one of the few things an identity thief needs in order to steal from you. So guard this with your life.
Places you check into	Friends Only	Facebook Places is an app that allows you to check in to a location to share with your friends where you are. Some places even give coupons for checking in there. Either way, it’s too much information for a recruiter.

Customizing What Others Can Share about You
The What	The Recommended Setting	The Why
Photos and videos you’re tagged in	Friends Only	Because you can’t exactly control what your friends tag you in, keeping photos and videos away from the curious eyes of hiring managers is the safer option.
Permission to comment on your posts	Friends Only	Your friends are your friends because you like them. Unless you’re inviting strangers to comment on your posts, keep this setting controlled.
Suggest photos of you to friends	Enabled	Without this, Facebook just wouldn’t be fun!
Friends can post on your Wall	Enabled or Disabled	You have to decide this setting on your own. So the question here is this: Do you trust your friends?
Can see Wall posts by friends	Friends Only	Although having your friends comment on your Wall is a lot of fun, you can’t control what they say, so restrict this one just in case.
Friends can check you into Places	Disabled	That’s just wrong!

If someone posts something on your Wall that you don’t want others to see, you can always remove it. When you hover your mouse cursor over the post, a little X appears in the top-right corner. Clicking on it deletes the offending post from your Wall.

When you customize your “Sharing on Facebook” privacy settings, you can also control the level of privacy each individual photo album is set to. For example, you may want to share your New Year’s Eve party photos with Friends Only but share your job fair photos with Everyone.

You can set these options whenever you create new albums. If you already have some photo albums that you want to retroactively change privacy settings for, just click on the Edit Privacy Settings for Existing Photo Albums and Videos link on the Customize Settings page.