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Know Thyself: Launch a Business Doing What You Love
June 18, 2010
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“Julie and Julia” and your career -Part One
June 17, 2010
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Know Thyself: and Then Forget What You Know
June 15, 2010
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Know Thyself: Feeling Gracious? Or is It Something Else?
June 11, 2010
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Know Thyself: Emotional Intelligence and Your Viability as a Job Candidate.
June 8, 2010
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Know Thyself: Put Your Best You Forward.
June 4, 2010
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Seven Secrets the Internet May Reveal about You…to Your Future Boss
October 9, 2008 | Author: Promise Phelon | Filed under: Uncategorized
Why your online brand really matters, especially in a down economy
As I write, the Dow has plunged more than 500 … no 600 … no, make that 700, points for the second time in two weeks. Ebay has just announced 24,000 job cuts. HP is cutting another 1,000+ jobs overseas. GM is closing another plant. Kraft is getting ready to announce layoffs.
Ouch.
Late last week, the U.S. Labor Department reported a loss of 159,000 jobs in September, the biggest drop in jobs in five and a half years and the ninth straight month of losses for the U.S. economy. Since 2008 began, we’ve lost more than three quarters of a million jobs.
Ouch. Ouch.
Hiring managers’ butts are on the line these days. They face high risk—and lots of them: the risk of inefficiency and downtime while people ramp into new jobs, the risk of exposure created by a failed hire, the risk of wasting too much time in the recruitment process.
And a recent report by CareerBuilder tells us that hiring managers mitigate that risk by using the Internet to investigate two anchors of your personal brand—image and reputation.
You control your image. Image is how you look, what you say, how you respond, what your resume and bio represent, as well as what the references you give to hiring managers say. (All vetted and speaking good things about you, to be sure.)
Reputation is what the Web community controls. It’s what’s out there in the social space, whether “what’s out there” is something you initially launched that took on a life of its own or what others—back door references—have said about you.
Your personal brand is your bond. And these days, it’s more important than ever before to proactively monitor and perform housekeeping on your online brand.
Data from the CareerBuilder report support this:
· 22 percent of hiring managers said they’ll look you up on social networking sites before considering you further (I tend to think that number is low)
· 9 percent said they don’t do Internet checks now but they will start soon
· 34 percent are likely to find something negative about you—giving them reason to say no
· 24 percent are likely to find something positive about you—reaffirming their decision to hire
And it’s not just the social networking sites like LinkedIn or Spoke that help and hinder. If you blog, if you post comments on blogs, if you’re a member of a community related to your profession or a hobby, if you frequent online forums or political debates, if you’ve ever ranted or raved to any online audience … chances are good that those conversations are etched in the e-scape and available to interested hiring managers.
What dirt might hiring managers find? According to the CareerBuilder report:
1. Whether you drink or do drugs (loose lips, or fingers, tend to tell …)
2. Whether you’ve posted what could be considered racy or lurid materials
3. That you hired someone to write your resume and cover letter (blog and forum posts tell the true tale of your communication skills)
4. That you embellished your qualifications
5. That you’ve made what could be perceived as discriminatory remarks
6. Whether you’ve broken the confidence of former employers
7. Whether you’re prone to bad-mouthing and negativity
Now, before you start looking for your next job, is the time to clean up your name on the net, especially if these or other brand-marring crimes might—even if in perception only—apply to you.
Click here to see the original CareerBuilder report.
Link:
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2 people have left comments
I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you down the road!
Stacey, many thanks for your comments. Keep in touch!