You can be on Entrepreneur’s cover!

How Recruiters Creepily Troll Social Media for Job Candidates (Infographic) Forget creepy exes. Headhunters are snooping your social media accounts, too.

By Kim Lachance Shandrow

entrepreneur daily

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Social media isn't just for posting instabrags and catching up with your fifth-grade bestie anymore. Headhunters are in on the digital elbow-rubbing game, too, and they're trolling people's personal social media profiles for potential hires now more than ever.

Related: 6 Recruitment Trends You Can't Ignore in 2015

Case in point: Some 73 percent of recruiters have hired a candidate sourced via personal social media cherry-picking, according to a recent study by JobVite. The recruiting software seller also reports that some 93 percent of hiring managers creep potential hires' social profiles while weighing whether or not to hire them. And 61 percent of them bumped into posts they didn't like (including shoddy spelling and grammar, of all things), so be careful what you post. Just think, even a wee typo could cost you your dream job.

As you might've guessed, recruiters are most active on LinkedIn. Next comes Facebook, followed by Twitter and candidates' personal blogs. Ew, we know. Then again, you should know by now not to put anything on the Internet that you aren't okay with everyone on Earth seeing.

Related: 5 Reasons Why Your Social-Recruiting Strategy Isn't Working

For more juicy (and somewhat frightening) social media snooping recruitment stats than you ever wanted to know, check out the infographic from CareerGlider below.

Click to Enlarge

How Recruiters Creepily Troll Social Media for Job Candidates (Infographic)

Kim Lachance Shandrow

Former West Coast Editor

Kim Lachance Shandrow is the former West Coast editor at Entrepreneur.com. Previously, she was a commerce columnist at Los Angeles CityBeat, a news producer at MSNBC and KNBC in Los Angeles and a frequent contributor to the Los Angeles Times. She has also written for Government Technology magazine, LA Yoga magazine, the Lowell Sun newspaper, HealthCentral.com, PsychCentral.com and the former U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. C. Everett Coop. Follow her on Twitter at @Lashandrow. You can also follow her on Facebook here

Want to be an Entrepreneur Leadership Network contributor? Apply now to join.

Editor's Pick

Business News

James Clear Explains Why the 'Two Minute Rule' Is the Key to Long-Term Habit Building

The hardest step is usually the first one, he says. So make it short.

Business News

Microsoft's New AI Can Make Photographs Sing and Talk — and It Already Has the Mona Lisa Lip-Syncing

The VASA-1 AI model was not trained on the Mona Lisa but could animate it anyway.

Living

Get Your Business a One-Year Sam's Club Membership for Just $14

Shop for office essentials, lunch for the team, appliances, electronics, and more.

Side Hustle

He Took His Side Hustle Full-Time After Being Laid Off From Meta in 2023 — Now He Earns About $200,000 a Year: 'Sweet, Sweet Irony'

When Scott Goodfriend moved from Los Angeles to New York City, he became "obsessed" with the city's culinary offerings — and saw a business opportunity.