If you’re in the job market now, or will be in the future, you better believe that employers will be Googling you. Not only that, but they’ll be trying to find your profiles on MySpace, Facebook, and other social networks. Through these search engines and sites, they’ll be digging up your photographs, message board postings, and anything else they can find. In this age of information, how do you make sure your online reputation is an asset instead of a crutch? Tech gossip rag Valleywag offers up a number of tips for making sure H.R. departments examining your resume aren’t able to dig up dirt on the Web:
- Keep from posting self-defamatory material in the first place.
- Make your profiles private.
- Stay on top of the information returned by a Google search for your name.
- Log out of all your social networks, and take a look at how your profiles look to an outsider.
Some of the most important advice from Valleywag concerns controlling the system by embracing it, instead of avoiding it. If you have even a quasi-common name, abstaining from online activity only means that someone else’s indiscretions might be mistaken for your own. Make sure this doesn’t happen by building an interconnected network of professional-looking profiles, and perhaps even your own blog. Make sure that you can by found through Google, and the results are flattering.
So how should you go about putting all these tips to work for your advantage? Read Valleywag’s “Silicon Valley User’s Guide: How to look good when your recruiter googles you” for the full story. Source: //engtech.
