How High School Students Can Leverage Social Media for Career Development

Social media is mostly considered a bad habit. Not quite as detrimental as smoking or alcohol, but also not carrots and jogging. 

It is true that regular social media usage can have detrimental effects. It is also true that these effects are seen more significantly in young populations.

That doesn’t mean that teenagers can’t benefit from their social media presence. By carefully cultivating an online persona, high school students can boost their odds of impressing the admissions department of a university or even finding their first job.

In this article, we take a look at how social media can be used for good.

Developing a Personal Brand

Organizations are more keen than ever on developing their brand. A set of beliefs that not only reflect their professional output but also a world view.

To ensure that their brand remains consistent, they look for job candidates that reflect their values.

Anyone with a social media account can do the same. Carefully cultivated, social media posts can reflect your students’ worldview and assure universities and potential employers that the applicant would be a good personality fit.

How do your students accomplish this? There are two important steps. The first is that they should actively post only in ways that reflect the value they were trying to communicate.

For example, if your students are fixed on a particular social cause, they may wish to make posts that educate the community and showcase their commitment to change. These types of posts will not necessarily earn them a job, but they will make your students more enticing to an employer or university that shares those values

The second step is to make sure that your students don’t post anything that contradicts or conflicts with the persona they were trying to create.

It helps when they are being honest about their values. Chances are that there are employers or universities that share whatever it is they believe in.

By carefully aligning their online presence with their beliefs and values, your students can attract compatible employers.

Social Media as a Professional Skill

It’s also helpful to keep in mind that social media is something every business tries to leverage for their branding and marketing purposes. Therefore, they will naturally be attracted to candidates who have a strong grasp of various social media platforms.

High school students can demonstrate a skill at connecting with a large audience regularly may be attractive to employers, who are trying to achieve the same results with their own social media platforms.

To this end, it will be helpful to have a specific and almost academic understanding of the various platforms. Facebook, X, and LinkedIn all have different requirements. Unique expectations that anyone on the platform will have for a post.

X posts, for example, are short and punchy. Facebook posts are usually a little bit longer. LinkedIn post posts are informational. Instagram posts are short and personal. Candidates who can demonstrate their keen understanding of multiple social media platforms will be attractive to future employers.

Social Media as a Secondary Skill

People who are good at utilizing social media may also have secondary skills that employers value. For example, graphic design. Video editing. Sound engineering. Writing. Even data processing.

A lot goes into a great social media post.

It’s always a good idea to take a look at what your students are good at and think about ways you could help them frame those skills to a potential employer.

Saying “I am very good at Twitter” might not get your students very far unless they are applying for a job as a social media account manager. However, saying they have extensive experience with graphic design and showcasing that ability— in the context of social media— distinguishes their application from other candidates.

Social Media for Networking

Finally, social media is becoming an increasingly prominent place to meet other like-minded professionals. LinkedIn is the most prominent platform for relationships. Jobseekers can use LinkedIn to establish themselves as experts in the area that they are interested in working in.

People interested in making professional connections on LinkedIn should regularly post thoughtful articles relating to their professional interests.

They should also engage in productive conversations and make a point of connecting with like-minded people. Even if these professional relationships do not result directly in a job offer they may help your students’ applications stand out when they begin applying for jobs.

Can you get into trouble with social media?

You definitely can. In fact, even if your students do not post controversial topics, it is a good idea for them to be highly selective with what they publish online.

Even a picture of your students out at a party with their friends can be construed as inappropriate by a conservative company. They probably won’t worry that your students are untrustworthy just because they have active social lives, but they may be concerned that the image contradicts the one that they are trying to put out.

Using social media to find employment can be rewarding and effective, but it also means being extremely conscientious of everything that gets posted online.

In other words, your students can’t do it halfheartedly. If they are going to use their social media presence to showcase their talents and make connections, they have to make sure that everything they post is consistent with these efforts.