Before applying for jobs, check what someone outside your usual audience can see: your profile, older posts, public replies and tagged content. Save anything you want to keep, then decide what to leave public, restrict, archive or delete. A focused review is more useful than deleting an account without looking through it.
Start with your public view
List the accounts you use and any older ones you still control. Search your name and familiar usernames, then open the relevant profiles in a signed-out browser where the platform allows it. Check your photo, bio, public links and visible posts. A login screen is a limit on that check, not proof that the whole account is private.
Check privacy settings inside each account as well. CareerOneStop, a service sponsored by the US Department of Labor, recommends limiting public visibility and thinking about which personal information, posts and comments you would be comfortable with an employer seeing.
Read CareerOneStop's social media guidance
Look beyond the profile grid
Review older posts, replies and comments, not just your newest photographs. Look for personal contact details you no longer want public, work information you should not have shared and remarks whose context is missing. This is your judgement about what represents you; an awkward phrase on its own does not establish misconduct.
Check tagged photos and posts separately. Distinguish material you published from something another person posted about you. For someone else's content, review the available tag controls or contact the author rather than assuming that clearing your own account removes their copy.
Choose an action for each item
Keep work, interests and memories you are happy to share. Where the platform offers it, consider a narrower audience or an archive for content you want to retain privately. Choose deletion for items you no longer want on that account, after checking the platform's confirmation and recovery information.
Back up photographs and other material you want before making changes. Download the archive and open it; a confirmation that the export was requested is not the backup itself.
Back up social posts before deleting them
If you decide to remove old posts after that review, work through one platform at a time and check what you selected.
Choose which Facebook posts to remove
Review Instagram posts for deletion or archiving
Choose which old X posts to remove
Check the result
Reopen the public view after changing visibility or removing content. Check the actual item as well as the profile. If an old Google result remains, open its link to see whether it is stale or leads to a copy elsewhere. X explicitly warns that copies outside its service may remain after a post is deleted.
Read X's explanation of what deletion removes
Keep application answers accurate and complete. This checklist helps you review your public presence; it does not predict what a particular employer will search for or guarantee an outcome.