Atlanta, Ga.—My father said it best, when he warned: “It takes a lifetime to build a good reputation, but only a few minutes to ruin one.” By now we have all heard the stories of someone who was interviewing for a great job, only to be told they did not receive the offer because of their beer funnel guzzling Myspace party photos.
Even if you are not posting evidence of your latest debauchery or otherwise questionable activities on Facebook or Myspace, you have to be aware of your “virtual footprint”. Snarky comments about your boss or co-workers on Twitter brand you as mean-spirited. Belonging to online communities that espouse values or activities that you wouldn’t want to tell your mother about - not a good idea. Blogging is a wonderful tool for self-promotion and portraying yourself as an expert in your field, but try to keep the old minefield topics, religion, sex and politics out of it, unless of course you are a therapist, minister or political activist.
In this job market, you want to put your best foot forward at all times and you should actually pro-actively manipulate your online profile. Every action you take on the web (aside for those that are completely private) should be specifically geared toward finding your dream job.
Here is a game plan for you:
- Google yourself! See what comes up. Recently, a candidate I was working with googled himself only to find that some man with the same first name took up the entire first page of google, because a tree fell on his house during a tornado and several tv stations and newspapers interviewed him for his fifteen minutes of fame. This buried my candidate’s professional mentions in the google rankings. What can you do about that? Google scours the web for most recent entries, so I told my candidate to join some online networking sites to fill out a new professional profile. Sites like Naymz, Spoke, Linked In, Xing, etc. are free for a basic membership and will help refresh your google rankings.
- Create your own resume site. Depending on how technical you are, it can be as simple as creating a google profile, see http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/create-your-google-profile.html, or you can build your own page. This is a great way for us recruiters to find you, as we all use google search strings that specifically search for the word “resume” in the url or title page, along with our specific keywords. Here is an example: (intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) online marketing (maine OR me) -service -”writing service” . Try it and you will find the most web savvy of your compatriots in Maine. I also recommend a site called www.visualcv.com, especially if you are in the online marketing or graphic design field, purely for the visual punch it packs.
- Remain true to your personality. This is not, by any means, a recommendation to pretend to be someone else. Being yourself is your best selling point, unless you really are a crude, boorish oaf. Show your sense of humor and wit where you can. Twitter tweets lend themselves beautifully to that end, as does blogging. This is also an opportunity to show that you are a master of your craft. When, in our recent history, did we have the opportunity to sell ourselves with anything other than a paper resume and a cover letter? Think of the internet as a way to showcase yourself, your intellect and your skills in a way that was never possible before. No matter what line of work you are in, there is a way to exhibit your professional achievements. If you are a baker, you could post photos to your flickr account and blog about your latest delectable creation. If you are an online marketer, you could show snapshots of your website’s online merchandising successes or participate in online networking groups giving advice to others in your field.
There are many ways to distinguish yourself and at the same time become immenently “findable” and I know this because these are some of the ways I have found some fantastic passive candidates. So. please, go out there and create your best multi-faceted “online footprint” and I look forward to finding and meeting you in the future.
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What a really refreshing post. Must say this is by far the best thing I’ve come across today after having read through many many posts. Its too logical to ignore that the online reputation can make it or break it for me. I shall get to work putting myself straight wherever necessary on my social networks. Thanks for this amazing post.