Our society has become obsessed with social media.
People, on average, spend more time tweeting and updating Facebook posts than they spend talking to their friends in person. Social media is more than just a place to share pictures of your breakfast, lunch or dinner, though. Many employers are adding a search of potential employees’ social media platforms as part of the hiring process. A scan of these platforms could prevent some people from being offered a job.
So, what happens when you post something that could compromise your future job? Enter: Persona, an application that allows its users to link their Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus accounts where they can be monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
While this may sound like a “big brother” platform to some, Persona aims only to help its users remain reputable in the eyes of potential future employers.Persona scans each post for “questionable” content that could prove to be problematic in the professional world.
Because I was curious as to exactly how and whether this application worked, I signed up for Persona. I’m happy to say that it did, in fact, scan all of my social media feeds. It scanned back to the beginning of my history on each platform, and flagged certain words in a few posts. Although several of the words were not actually questionable in the context they were used, I am thankful it flagged because it showed me the app does actually work.
The application does not flag anything on your actual accounts. It marks everything under your Persona account where you can view the posts at a later time. This allows you to make sure the post is something you want to keep. After it is marked, Persona will allow you to click on the post and take you to it on whichever platform you posted it where you can then delete it in case it needs to be removed.
Fortunately, the basic Persona app is free. It does, however, offer an app for purchase, Persona Pro, that scans pictures as well as text post, links etc.
The free account scans anything you post as well as anything people post on your wall or tweet at you. It also scans likes, hashtags, links and comments. The Persona Pro account scans up to 150 past images and up to 50 images per month. This includes tagged images.
When Persona finds anything that has been tagged as “questionable,” it will email you immediately. If you have your cell phone number registered, it will also send a text to let you know it flagged a post. Persona will not remove the post for you; ultimately, the user still has decide whether it is something that should be kept or deleted. Persona will also flag people who have posted “questionable” material to your profile. When it tags the people, it gives you the option to prevent those people from posting on your wall any more.
While personally it flagged 96 of my posts, a few of them were “happy birthday” wishes to some of my friends, so I’m not entirely sure why those were flagged as questionable. But, that does restore comfort that it will catch almost anything. After downloading the app just to try it out, I will definitely be keeping my platforms linked to it.
