1. your education doesn’t match your claims – it’s amazing how many job applicants lie about their education credentials, despite the ease with which these can be checked. And some people make it easier than ever when their Facebook or LinkedIn profile lists an education background that doesn’t match the information on their resume. If there’s any discrepancy across your profiles, it will appear as though you’re lying. Be complete and completely truthful.
2. photos of you in compromising situations – you’ve gone through the interview process, and the hiring decision comes down to you and one other candidate. You have a photo page displaying you chugging from a beer bong, passed out at a friend’s party and carousing in Cancun. The other candidate only presents circumspect shots of gatherings with family and friends, without any hint of drunkenness or out of control behavior. Which of you is the safest hire? It’s essential that you sanitize your photos, untag yourself from unsavory photos in friends’ photo albums and set up privacy constraints that restrict access to your personal photos. Examine your profile as an employer would and remove any item that could be compromising.
3. lie about qualifications – again, your online personal profiles frequently contain a wealth of information about previous jobs, dates of employment and job titles. If they don’t match the information you provided your potential employer, you’re out of contention. It’s also important to know that if you have a blog – whether personal or professional – your prospective employer will likely read that also to gauge your appropriateness for hire. And if your blog posts about your job don’t match the details you provided the potential employer, you’ll be perceived as deceptive.
4. badmouth employer or staff - the Internet is forever. Too many job seekers forget that inconvenient fact. The blog post, tweet or comment that you wrote last year blasting your former employer, revealing personal details about your boss or abusing your coworkers will never disappear. Intemperate comments will raise questions about your judgment, discretion and temperament, so be careful in your postings. When in doubt, don’t hit “Submit.”
5. discriminatory comments – any comments that you make online that can be interpreted as discriminatory, racist or sexist can eliminate you immediately from consideration. It doesn’t matter if you think you were being funny, sarcastic or ironic. Companies are risk averse, and simple won’t take the risk of hiring someone with discriminatory attitudes. Any comment you make in a public forum, like Twitter, or on your Facebook wall will be reviewed and judged so it’s best to refrain entirely from making incendiary or offensive comments.

There are ways to protect personal contact on most social media platforms. Facebook, which contains the most personal information, allows you to determine precisely who gets to view your wall posts, profile information and photos. Users can create multiple lists of friends, some who have all access permission while others have restricted access to a small subset of your online content. Learn how to manage your privacy settings, sanitize your online photos and, above all, simply tell the truth.

So, how can you build your personal network and increase your chances of finding your ideal job?  Here are some quick tips:

1. Create a blog that centers around your professional expertise. Then fill it with posts. Done right, your blog will be more effective than any resume in communicating the level of your professional knowledge and insight.
2. Make sure the name or tagline of your blog clearly conveys your special professional skills.
3. Create a series of posts that teach me something about what you do. Include pictures, diagrams, samples and even a portfolio of your most effective work product. No matter what your specialty, from driving a truck to running a hedge fund, there is plenty of material you can create to educate others.
4. Read and comment on other bloggers’ sites. Every day.
5. Let the other bloggers in your industry know you exist. Send them your posts. Start a conversation. And ask them to add your blog to their blogroll so the search engines find you and rank you.
6. Go to industry events. Go online and check the monthly schedules for all the professional organizations in your area. Then attend with a pocketful of business cards that includes all of  your social media contact information.
7. When you meet someone you’d like to work for, follow them on every social media channel. Read their blog, follow their tweets, read their LinkedIn profile. Learn everything you can about them so you can stay in touch and send them articles and links you know they’ll be interested in. Help them and there’s a good chance they’ll help you.
8. Follow staffing and recruiting professionals on Twitter, facebook and LinkedIn. Their blog posts and tweets are full of useful information that can help you refine your resume, hone your interviewing skills and alert you to job openings.
9. Clean up your online networking profiles to ensure that there is nothing embarrassing or potentially offensive. No photos of you drinking, smoking or engaged in any potentially disturbing activity. Untag yourself from any potentially offensive photos that exist on any of your friends’ photo pages. Remove any offensive or vulgar language. Then modify your privacy settings so your most personal information remains private and unseen except by your closest friends.
10. Search for and connect with similar professionals on all the major social media platforms. Start conversations with them, participate in online forums and contribute to their groups. Create a Twitter list that includes only these professionals so you stay focused like a laser beam.

Remember, by leveraging these social media platforms, you get a chance to reach not only your contacts, but the entire constellation of contacts that are just one or two degrees removed from you. And you never know who’s hiring.