The Internet is a place where your
reputation is built, and where it lives
forever. So it’s a good idea to Google
yourself — that is, search for your name
in the Google search engine — to find
out the first things people learn about
you when they do an online search. On
the flip side, you can Google other people, too — for instance, potential business partners and job candidates — to
find out whether there is anything else
you need to know about them.
Have
If you h
learn
(whe
job
w
It’s a safe bet that pretty much
everyone is Googling everybody else
these days. Google is used for more
than 1 billion searches per day. A 2007
study done by Execunet found that 83
percent of recruiters and hiring man-
agers Googled potential candidates.
By now, that number is probably even
higher. The huge growth of social media
also has people looking for information
on such sites as Facebook, Twitter and
LinkedIn. The social media monitor-
ing service Reppler reported last year
that 91 percent of employers use social
networking sites to screen prospective
employees. What’s more, those sites
come up in Google searches, too, so
prospective employers or clients don’t
even have to visit them specifically to
find out about you.
What all this means for you is
simple: To protect your reputation and
advance your career, you’ve got to find
out what’s being said about you — and
then take active steps to control the
How to Get Started
The beauty of checking your reputation
online is that it’s easy to do. Just go to
Google, type your name and hit enter.
Look at the first three pages of search
results. Generally, few searchers will
look past that point. You should also
do a search with your name in quotation marks — “Jane Doe” — to provide
more focused results. Then, do separate
searches with your name and a key
term about you, such as your employer,
title or position. These are the kinds of
searches someone will do to try to get to
know you, sometimes before you actually meet in person.
As you search, take note of what
comes up in those first few pages. Does
your personal Facebook page appear?
Is it your bio on a professional website?
Is it someone with a blog complaining
about you? You’ll likely see your college
and social club affiliations, appointments to volunteer positions, articles
you’ve written, job history, professional
membership and posts you’ve made on
blogs. Your vacation pictures stored on
your personal social media, such as the
Flickr photo site, also could come up.
All that information will tell a story
about you. The question is whether it’s
the story you want told. Having the right
story versus the wrong story can make a
huge difference in your career. Execu-
net noted that 45 percent of recruiters
and hiring managers eliminated can-
didates based on what they found out
about them online. Reppler, meanwhile,
reported that 69 percent of employers
rejected candidates based on what they
found on social media. However, a good
online reputation can make all the dif-
ference, too. For example, Reppler said
68 percent of employers have hired a
candidate because of something they
saw about them on social media.
Fix What Needs Fixing
Once you’ve established what you’d like
your online reputation to be, it’s time to
start shaping it. The first step is dealing
with any negative information — photos
and comments, either by you or about
you, that you feel don’t reflect your
best self. Examples might include complaints about your current employer or
pictures of that spring break trip you’d
rather not re-live. If you posted the
items yourself, remove them. It’s more
difficult to remove something if someone else has posted it, but if you ask
