Managing Social Media Privacy

Drop it, and do not treat that as a failure. Findability is the whole point of a professional profile and it is exactly what it costs. If there is someone she does not want to be found by, the honest answer is that a public profile works against her, and no privacy setting changes that reliably.

What you can do instead is separate the goal from the tool. What a profile gives her is a way for employers to see what she can do. That can also be a document she sends, a listing on a service that is not publicly searchable, or an introduction made by a person. Those are slower and they do not put her name in a search engine.

If she does want a profile, then the work is narrowing what it exposes rather than switching on a setting. A profile without a photo, without a current employer, without a home town and without connections that map her family is still a useful profile.

She also asked me to help her check what is already out there about her. I did not really know how to approach that.

Do it together and start with what anyone can see, not with settings. Search her name in a browser window where neither of you is logged in, since a logged-in search shows you a personalised result and not what a stranger sees. Look at her own accounts as a stranger would, using the view as public option where the platform has one.

Then work through what turns up in order of exposure: old accounts she has forgotten, photos posted by other people, tagged locations, and anything with a workplace or an address in it. Removing what she controls is straightforward. What other people posted needs asking them, and that is a decision she should make rather than you.

One thing to know before you start. Under the GDPR she can ask a service to erase personal data about her, and can ask a search engine to remove results in some circumstances. It is not automatic and it is not fast, but it is a real route and worth naming rather than treating the internet as permanent.