Go Google yourself

It’s time to clean up your online identity. Just like it’s important to check your credit reports annually, you should check out your what’s public about you online. Why? Because employers and savvy HR managers now look for such info before making hiring decisions. It’s the easiest background check for maturity and professionalism.

Good stuff you want them to find:

• Press releases about your promotions, accomplishments.
• Article contributions.

Bad stuff you should never have posted online:

• Your personal rants about a former employer, teacher, school mates, etc.
• Your Web site with links to naked pictures of celebrities.
• Your YouTube videos of yourself doing stupid human tricks.

Use common sense.
Once you release your comments, pics and video too the wild WWW, chances are they are out there for good. You’ll be doing damage control and explaining them for years to come.

What if someone else has written negative things about you?

• You could try to make peace with that person and have the content removed.
• You could contact the ISP and request they remove the content. (Highly Unlikely)
• You could hire a Search Engine Optimization expert to implement an SEO campaign to effectively bury the negative content about you and elevate positive content about you.

What if your name is very common?
If one or dozens of people share your name, you should take steps to single yourself out.

• Create an index page of links to positive content online about you.
• Use a free service like ClaimId to create an online profile of yourself.

Then you can publish those links on your resume to help steer prospective employers to relevant online items about you.

Related links:

• Claim ID
• LA Times: Oops, Mom Googled Me

I hope you find this helpful. Please post any suggestions.
Thanks.
-Roland

Roland Reinhart is an interactive marketing professional who is not ashamed to admit that he Google’s himself. His observations can be found at Chaos365.com and AdMadMan.com.

©2006 Roland Reinhart. All Rights Reserved.