Do employers check Pinterest?
Short answer: Some do. Several screening vendors list Pinterest among the platforms they review, and Pinterest profiles, boards, and Pins are public unless you change that. The good news is that it's quick to check yourself. Most of what's on a typical account is saved images, so the parts that matter most are your board names, your profile, and anything you wrote.
Which screening vendors include Pinterest
Checkr lists Pinterest alongside Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Reddit in its social media search.[1] Cisive's list includes Pinterest too, along with Tumblr, Strava, and a general Google search.[2] Not every vendor names it, and employers choose what their checks cover. But if you have an account, assume it can be found. Vendors match people to accounts using details like your name and email, as covered in how employers find your social media.
Why Pinterest is easy to forget
A lot of people opened an account years ago, saved a few hundred Pins for a wedding or a kitchen remodel, and stopped thinking about it. Those boards don't expire. They stay on your profile, under your name, until you change them. And unless you've turned on search privacy, your profile and boards can also turn up when someone searches your name outside Pinterest.[5]
What a screener would actually see
- Your profile. Display name, photo, bio, and any website link.
- Your board names. These are the headline of your profile and the first thing anyone skims. A board name is your own words.
- Your Pins. Mostly images, often with a caption written by whoever pinned it first. Saving a Pin to a public board still puts it on your profile, where it reads as something you chose to keep.
- Anything you wrote. Descriptions on Pins you uploaded yourself, and comments on other people's Pins.
The categories are the same ones screeners use everywhere else: violence, threats, harassment, intolerance, sexual content, drugs, and crime. Our methodology explains each one. Recipe boards, wedding planning, and home decor aren't what anyone is looking for, and protected characteristics like religion or pregnancy are never grounds for a flag.
Examples
| Rating | Example item | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Public board named "Wake and bake" | A drug reference in your own words, at the top of your profile (Drugs). | |
| Public board of explicit or sexually suggestive images | Sexual content saved to a board under your name (Sex). | |
| Public board named "Cocktail recipes" | Alcohol on its own isn't a flag. | |
| Public board of scripture and faith quotes | Religion is a protected characteristic and is never flagged. |
Illustrative examples, not from real users. They show how PruneSocial's categories would read these items. These examples are illustrations, not a real person's account.
A 10-minute Pinterest self-check
- See it the way a stranger does. Log out, or open a private browser window, and search your name with the word Pinterest. Then open your profile from the results.
- Read every board name. If you wouldn't want a board name read aloud in an interview, rename it, hide it, or delete it.
- Open your oldest boards. Those are the ones people forget. Scroll quickly for anything you wouldn't save today.
- Check your profile basics. Display name, photo, bio, and website link.
- Look at what you wrote. Descriptions on Pins you uploaded, and any comments you left on other people's Pins.
How to fix what you find
Make a board secret. Open the board, click the three dots next to its name, choose Edit board, turn on Keep this board secret, and click Done. Only you and anyone you invite can see a secret board.[3] This is the best fix for a board you want to keep but don't need to show.
Delete a single Pin or board. For one-off items you don't want at all, open the Pin or board, edit it, and delete it.
Make your whole profile private. Go to Settings, then Profile visibility, and turn on Private profile. Private profiles don't appear in Pinterest search or in search engines. If you have a business account, you'll need to switch it to a personal account first.[4]
Stay public but out of Google. Search privacy tells search engines to leave your profile and boards out of their results. Pinterest adds that tag right away, but results that are already in a search engine can take a while to clear.[5] Do this well before you apply, not the week of.
One limit to know: hiding your own board generally doesn't pull back copies other people already saved to their own boards.
How PruneSocial handles Pinterest
PruneSocial now reads a Pinterest export. Pinterest’s data download is a set of web pages, and it’s mostly saves: in one real export we reviewed, 1,350 of 1,376 Pins were saves of someone else’s content. So the scan splits what it finds. The Pins you created, your board names and descriptions, and your About text are your own words. Pins you saved to public boards are treated the way a like is, because a public board shows them under your name. A flagged saved Pin is flagged for the text on the Pin, not for anything you wrote, and the fix is to remove it from your board. Secret boards are skipped.
Much of a Pin’s meaning lives in its image, and PruneSocial scores text only, so expect Pinterest to produce fewer flags than other platforms. The steps above are still worth ten minutes. To get your data, see how to download your Pinterest data.
Check your other platforms too
PruneSocial scores the text in your exports from X, Instagram, Facebook, Threads, LinkedIn, Reddit, YouTube, TikTok, and Pinterest (posts, comments, replies, pins, boards, and likes where the platform provides them), and gives you one specific fix for anything flagged. Try a free 50-item preview first.
Start a free preview