Personal posts can come back to bite prospective employees or even current employees and impact future employability. This can make what your teen is posting on social media have an impact beyond likes or retweets. Just think of all the times your teen has been excited about a social media post getting hundreds of likes or retweets.

Now think of how long that will stay around and who might see it when it’s time to send out resumes or job applications. Will a future employer come across it and use it as a reason to not hire your teen? What anyone posts on social media matters more than they might think.

The number of employers searching social media accounts has increased 500% in the last decade, and [93% of hiring managers] review a candidate’s social profile before making a hiring decision. Drug references, sexually explicit posts, profanity, racist or sexist posts, aggressive or derogatory remarks, or poor communication skills can all negatively impact someone searching for a job. As can a complete absence of an online presence.

While questionable posts may come back to haunt your teen later in life, there are ways teens can use social media to make them stand out to job recruiters or maybe to find the job of a lifetime.

If your teen is volunteering or has made a donation to a charity, encourage them to share it – 65% of job recruiters have reconsidered hiring a candidate after seeing on their social profile that they volunteered or donated to charity.

Along with this, if your teen makes their resume or job application cohesive with their social profiles, they’ll stand out from the crowd. Social media doesn’t have to be feared in the job search. Used strategically and correctly, a job searcher may find the job they’re searching for and stand out from the crowd.