Have you ever Googled your name to see what pops up?
Granted if you have a popular name you might need to search for awhile but if you’re on Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn, if you run a website(s) or contribute to websites or have a blog, chances are your name appears somewhere on the Internet.
Plus, when you give access to other people to view your profile on social networking sites like Facebook where you can post pictures and make comments, you’re essentially letting people see part of your life that in some cases, can come back to haunt you.
I recently read an article about how your online reputation can hurt you and the debate was whether or not pictures you posted on Facebook showing you drunk could harm your career. Some people felt it could harm you, some (including a few hiring managers) said they couldn’t care less which I found a bit odd. I’ve run into more than one hiring manager who was literally looking for a reason not to hire someone…and drunk pictures would certainly do the trick I believe.
In my opinion, posting these sorts of pictures certainly don’t help anyways. I can’t see someone viewing such pictures and thinking “wow, that’s impressive. I need to hire this person!” I would tend to think that the average hiring manager would probably want to do some more checking on you if they happen to come across some pictures or if they happen across your website and happen to disagree with your comments, political views, etc.
When it comes to making a first impression, sometimes giving a bad one can’t be undone. The article I mentioned above referred to a recruiter who once received a resume from a guy who happened to mention that he had his own website so the recruiter checked the website out and found that for the most part, it was a harmless site that had pictures of the guy and his family. Then he paged down to the bottom of the homepage and saw a list of the guy’s favorite porn sites.
I can’t think of too many hiring manager being impressed with that.
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