Last month we asked the question what does your online reputation say about you?

What I didn’t mention though is the question of what you can do when you find out through a Google search that this is information out there that hurts you and your reputation?

If the information is something you can fix – like those drunk photos of you we talked about back on November 11 obviously you can fix that yourself.

But what if you have built an online reputation that you’d prefer wasn’t so readily available to a potential hiring manager through a Google search?

Maybe you have religious or political beliefs that you’ve discussed online, perhaps chat rooms or forums refer to you in unflattering terms, stuff like that.

How can you combat things like this?

For starters you can ensure that the profiles you have created on the Internet and can control – like your Facebook and LinkedIn profiles if applicable – are professional and worthy of being seen by a potential hiring manager. I’d say the LinkedIn one (and ones like it) are more important since anyone can do a quick search and view your basic profile whereas with Facebook at least you can limit the people who can view your profile. Plus LinkedIn is a professional networking tool that many hiring managers might automatically check. If you don’t have a LinkedIn profile, it could be a good idea to create a professional one since quite often it will help to produce a highly ranked search engine result when typing in your name.

Secondly, you can change the way your name is shown in your resume. If your name is Mike Smith and Googling your name yields the negative results, on your resume you could try showing your name as Michael A. Smith (or whatever your middle initial is) or Michael Anthony Smith. In other words, you spell your name out in whole in a different form than what appears on the Net. People tend to use the spelling of your name as you shown it and may even copy and paste it directly into the search engine. If you utilize this method, make sure your online profiles (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc) use your full name, too.

Keep an eye out for anything you submit online when you use your full name (which you shouldn’t do anyways). If you’re posting comments to chat rooms or forums using your real name, it could come back to haunt you.

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.