Social Sweepster scrubs embarrassing photos from your social profiles

We’ve all taken photos that we shouldn’t have, but do you know what they are? Some might seem quite innocent to you, like a photo of you and your friends having a few drinks at the bar, or maybe doing something silly like riding around in a shopping cart. Innocent enough, right? That might be true for the most part, but when it comes to being employed, employers might see things a little differently. Now with our names and social media pages being so readily available online, all an employers has to do is perform a quick search and he/she will be able to find out more about you in a matter of minutes. Well if you’d like to improve your chances of landing that dream job, a new company called Social Sweepster will help you do that by scanning and scrubbing your Facebook and Twitter pages.

Before a college graduate goes job hunting, he or she will probably do a few things: prepare a good resume, be ready to answer some key questions about his or her skills and qualifications, buy some nice clothes. There’s another task you might find yourself adding to your pre-interview to-do list if a new company, Social Sweepster, has its way: Scanning and scrubbing your Facebook and Twitter pages for pictures and other posts that might make a prospective employer think twice about offering you a job. Tom McGrath, a graduate of Indiana University’s Class of 2013, saw an opportunity to help job seekers find potentially damaging material on their social media accounts using so-called computer vision technology, and so he founded Social Sweepster. While he hasn’t been alone in devising services to help people on the job market tidy up their Facebook and Twitter accounts, Social Sweepster offers something that the competition hasn’t yet matched: attention not only to text but also to photos. Two other companies say they can search your social media accounts for things that might raise red flags when you’re hunting for a job. SimpleWash scans your Facebook and Twitter accounts for keywords that might point to objectionable material. You can search for terms on their “Undesirable content” list (or use keywords of your own devising) to find things you’ve said that you might regret, resulting in what the service promises will be “a newer, cleaner you,” at least online.