Twitter is by far one of my favorite social media platforms. I use it for news, socializing, entertainment, career information and more. It really is one of the greatest things ever (in a  “provided all of your basic needs have been met already” type of way.) Once upon a time I had multiple accounts – personal, professional and a couple of others for good measure. My thinking was that I’d have one account to talk about my career interests and another one to talk about all of my other interests. Thankfully dashboards such as Tweetdeck, HootSuite and others make it relatively painless to manage multiple accounts. However, one day I asked myself “why do you feel the need to have multiple online identities?“

We all know hiring managers are prejudging previewing applicants or potential applicants based on their social media presence more and more frequently. As such, we are being advised to keep our social media accounts private if we are job searching or even to keep them private at all times. Alternatively, people choose to have separate accounts and sometimes they take it a step further and not even use their real names on their personal accounts.

This is a no-judgement zone. Social media is not like loving someone (word to Keith Sweat)- there’s not a right and a wrong way to do it. For the most part. If you choose to maintain separate Twitter accounts, more power to you. I’ve been there too. But it eventually dawned on me that discussing reality tv or police brutality or music or mental health or homelessness or any other topic of interest to me shouldn’t preclude me being taken seriously in my field. I am not JUST an HR professional. I am a whole person and my Twitter account reflects this.

To be sure, I don’t say EVERYTHING I want to say or retweet EVERYTHING I find funny. I  also don’t tend to share explicit content. This is more a choice of how I wish to manage my social footprint plus a good dose of common sense than a fear of judgement or lost opportunities. At least that’s what I tell myself.

Bottom line – I have ONE Twitter account now – @tmrasberry (recently changed from @msrasberryinc) and if a hiring manager/HR Director/recruiter/consulting client opts not to interview or hire me because I don’t tweet about all HR (or social media) all the time, or because I DO tweet about some other “non-professional” topic, that’s probably not an organization/person I’d want to work with anyway.

Thoughts? Do you have separate Twitter accounts for personal and professional use? Why or why not?