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particularly social media, opens up our lives to the whole 
world, for good or ill. 
So, for example, if you express interest in a teaching job, 
whether it’s your first or the last one before retirement, will 
your prospective employers trawl your social media 
activity to see what you get up to? 
It’s certainly routine practice for recruiters in other parts 
of the working world. The UK recruitment blog the 
Undercover Recruiter
1
reported on a survey showing that 
91 per cent of a sample of 300 employers use social media 
to screen candidates. Of these, 69 per cent have turned 
down applicants because of what they found. On the 
other hand, 68 per cent have actually hired people on the 
strength of a social media check. 
1 See: http://theundercoverrecruiter.com/.
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Good ideas for good teachers who want good jobs
SOCIAL MEDIA ACTIVITY 
Evidence of employers checking the social media activity 
of prospective candidates in education is thin, and it seems 
likely to be less common than the Undercover Recruiter 
survey reports for other jobs – but it’s certain to increase.
One head asked about this said: 
We do not check as a matter of course but will 
use social media if we are struggling to 
shortlist. On occasion we have enormous 
fields and at this point it becomes helpful – 
someone playing piano or engaging in sport is 
more likely to be shortlisted than the candidate 
downing a pint of beer (obvious, and yet I’ve 
seen it time and time again).
Among actual examples provided by head teachers is one 
of a candidate for a senior post discovered to be routinely 
criticising his current head – in obscene terms – to 
‘friends’. 
Given the number of teachers who find themselves in 
trouble for social media carelessness, the case for routine 
checking is probably strong. In 2013, Victoria Briggs was 
reported in the New Teachers section of the 
TES 
discussing 
a huge increase in calls from teachers needing guidance: 
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Good teachers pay attention to their public profile
While there are instances of pupils setting up 
fake social media accounts in a teacher’s 
name, the majority of problems are the result 
of teaching staff themselves behaving 
inappropriately. More often than not, it’s a 
failure of basic common sense on the part of
professionals.
2
Individual cases mentioned by teaching unions and other 
organisations tend to be about sheer silliness (‘stupidity’ 
might be a better word) rather than anything really 
sinister. Boasting about ‘partying’ and drinking, for 
example, is relatively common among young people, but 
teachers who have been too open on social media about 
this aspect of their lives have been taken aback to find 
themselves in trouble. The self-defeating phrase ‘don’t tell 
anyone’ even appears in some questionable posts. 
It’s always been easy for teachers to make mistakes – to be 
seen falling into the bushes outside the pub, or behaving 
embarrassingly at an upmarket dinner attended by 
governors. Up until very recently, though, the effects were 
local. If you went for an interview in Sheffield, the 
governors didn’t know you’d been thrown out of a club in 
Basingstoke the night before. 
Now, though, the concept of a private life separate from a 
professional one has been eroded to the point where it 
hardly exists. 
2 
Victoria Briggs. ‘Be smart when it comes to using social media’,