I hear you dude, the Internet frustrates me too.

Up until a few years ago how many of us had thought about doing banking and paying bills at home on a computer rather than mailing checks in through the mail?

What about trading stocks online rather than paying a broker big commissions to do so?

Doing research for your upcoming job interview is certainly a lot easier thanks to the Internet compared to the old way i.e. going to the library and trying to find a (somewhat) new annual report of the company lying around that you could memorize a few key figures and facts from. Yeah, that’s what we used to do before the Internet.

As with anything though, you often have to take the good with the bad and the Net certainly has some negative aspects and some of them are related to job searching and career management.

It’s harder to control our privacy

Perhaps the biggest change that the Internet has brought to job searching – between personal websites, blogs, social media, etc – is that people are a lot easier to find than in the old days. Before the Net, it was relatively easy for you to maintain a low profile. These days, if you have an Internet connection, an email address, and or access to one or more social websites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, it’s a lot harder to hide.

Even if you don’t have access to these sites, if you have a friend(s) who does and they happen to post photos with you in them, they’ll be all over the Net in no time even if you’re not aware of it.

From a job searching and recruitment perspective the more exposure people have online the harder it is for us to control our image online. It also makes it more difficult for people in the hiring industry (recruiters specifically) to help job searchers because people are a lot easier to find online already by the hiring companies.

I remember back around 2000 when the Internet was certainly well-established but most of the big social media website weren’t in existence yet. Even then I recall several major recruitment clients we dealt with saying that they didn’t want us submitting any candidate who had their resume on a particular job board because the hiring company already had access to that job board and could find that perosn themselves.

In hindsight – actually even back then – I knew this was a silly stance for the companies to take. It’s absurd to suggest that because a person is on a particular job board database that the company could have already found them. Imagine a hiring company today saying “don’t send us the resume of anyone who has a Facebook account because we can find them ourselves.”

We rely on others to do their job

In the old days before the Internet, the main advantage of a recruiter to a hiring company – and by extension to job searchers – is that they could let hiring companies know about job searchers that the company wouldn’t have otherwise know anything about and they could let job searchers know about jobs that didn’t otherwise exist.

These days, it’s hard to imagine that many adults who have an Internet connection can’t be found one way or the other through a quick Google search or through the afore-mentioned social engines either directly or indirectly through someone else.

So how is that a bad thing?

Well for starters, the Internet has made it easier for anyone to post their resume on numerous job boards and to fire off dozens or hundreds of resume to hiring managers for jobs they may or may not actually be suitable for. Of course since everyone can do this, it means that now hiring managers might get bombarded by hundreds of emails rather than the hundreds of mailed/faxed resumes that they used to get for just one job.

In the old days though, sending off 100 printed resumes by fax or mail cost a lot more to do and was more time-consuming so people tended not to apply to as many jobs. It just took a lot longer and made it more difficult to do.

I remember following university graduation spending an entire afternoon tweaking and customizing perhaps 15-20 cover letter/resume combinations and mailing them to those 15-20 companies for consideration for a specific job. These days I can email that many job applications in a matter of minutes. Whether they actually get read though is the million dollar question.

Fundamentally the Internet has made it easier and quicker for us to apply for jobs but it’s made it harder for the people receiving them to wade through them. The Internet has also made technology more important in the process since it’s incumbent upon the resume writer to include relevant keywords and phrases in their resume that a hiring manager will (hopefully) include in the keyword search that they do to find resumes for their jobs.

In my experience though, hiring managers do a so-so job at searching job board databases because if they were better than this on average, recruiters would have long since gone the way of the dodo bird and become extinct as a profession. I can think of many specific cases (to refer back to the comment I made above about candidates on job boards) where I’d present a candidate to a company and they’d tell me that they saw that person’s resume in the job board that they used….of course they didn’t actually see the person’s resume in the database until after I’d brought the candidate to their attention!

In the end I quickly realized that I wasn’t going to work with these sorts of hiring companies as they were simply asking us to make up for their incompetence and send them candidates they’d find a reason not to have to pay us for. When you rely on others, you have to make sure they are people who can actually be relied upon, right?

Does it make you wonder about the times you applied for a job you felt you were truly qualified for but never got a call from the company and couldn’t understand why?

How can you be like cream and rise to the top?

The funniest part about the Internet job boards is with the exception of the people who own and work for the job boards, most people including career experts will agree that searching the boards for jobs has about the same likelihood of getting you a job as responding to an ad in a newspaper once did. Sure, people do get jobs using these methods but the percentages are very low that you’ll rise above all the other candidates who bombard the boards with their resume for the same job(s) as you.

Instead, people tend to agree that networking – actually meeting with and speaking with people who can positively influence your job search – is the way to go to get yourself a new job. That, plus other methods like proactively contacting companies you’d like to work for whether they have an advertised job or not tend sto hield better results. My brother in law got his last job by sending an unsolicited resume directly to the president of the company that ended up hiring him. This is especially good when you have skills or experience that are in demand and when people like you don’t fall from trees.

Again, we’re talking about cream rising to the top and that’s how you do it. By not using the same methods that everyone is using.

In other words you go back to the same job search methods that tended to work the best in the old days before the Internet job boards even existed.

Rant over.

What would an online search say about you?

Have you ever wondered whether a potential employer might probe beyond your stellar resume, your well written cover letter, and your list of references to determine if you are really a good fit for the job? If not, perhaps you should.

At some point within the last decade or so, armed with a computer and an internet connection, some employers began embarking on unofficial secret reconnaissance missions to uncover the real person behind the resume. These early pioneers who paved the way for today’s recruiters had one primary goal in mind: checking for skeletons in the closet.

This unofficial practice caught on quickly and, today, many employers consider a review of a candidate’s online exposure to be an essential part of the job application process. In one study, 45% of employers surveyed indicated that they routinely consult profiles on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn to help screen applicants. Another survey indicates that 3 out of 4 recruiters regularly conduct some sort of internet research on candidates. That same survey suggests that 1 in 4 employers have eliminated candidates based on what they uncovered during such electronic background checks.

As personal information available online continues to increase, job seekers should expect the number of employers who rely on the web as an important resource in assessing applicants to grow.

So, what does that mean for you, the job applicant?

Check Your Profiles

First, the obvious: it means that you should edit your profiles, if necessary, to ensure that you appear to be, at a minimum, a law-abiding, respectable member of society. Yes, that means you need to remove the photo of you dancing on top of a bar. And, yes, as long as you are searching for a job, that means that you need to keep it clean when writing on your buddy’s wall. Utilizing a site’s privacy settings may help you avoid exposing information that a recruiter might find offensive, but the better approach is to conduct a comprehensive review of your online image before you start sending out resumes.

Consider Discrepancies

However, in this digital age where information is so easily accessible, merely sanitizing your e-persona may not be enough. Instead, as a routine part of preparing any employment application, job seekers should take steps to ensure that the information an employer may find about them online is consistent with the information they deliberately submit during the application process. If your online persona does not resemble the person in the interview or the person described in the resume, recruiters may suspect that your stellar resume is misleading, that your well written cover letter is a fraud or that your former boss was less than candid when she gave you that glowing recommendation. The best advice for job seekers as they take steps to overhaul their online image: consistency is key.

For example, if your profile on a professional networking site highlights your talent as a salesman, but your resume and cover letter present you as a behind-the-scenes researcher, an employer may question the veracity of the information in your application. If your personal blog contains anti-government rants, but you submit your resume to a state agency, the red flags will start waving.

An Example

A lawyer friend of mine recently interviewed a candidate for a litigation position. Although the applicant described her passion for trial work and her aggressive advocacy skills, when my friend consulted a public website profiling and rating legal professionals, he learned that her practice previously focused on transactional work and that she had never even tried a case. Although that candidate was able to get her foot in the door with the representations contained in her resume, the discrepancies between her online persona and the image she projected in her interview convinced my friend that he could not trust her.

An Employer Perspective

Some employers, particularly those faced with huge stacks of resumes, may take this process a step further. One of my colleagues recently accepted applications for a sales position. His job posting made it clear that he sought someone with an outgoing personality who thrived in social settings. He easily narrowed the field of applicants by checking Facebook accounts and eliminating the possible wallflowers and introverts. From what he tells me, some applicants who did not receive invitations to interview looked great on paper. While I initially balked at what appeared to me to be a potentially unreliable test of aptitude or character, he insists that this was an inexpensive, easy way to begin the vetting process.

While capturing an employer’s attention and conveying one’s strengths should be a job seeker’s primary goal, applicants must also ensure that information employers can find about them online is consistent with the information they voluntarily provide. This warrants augmenting profiles on social networking sites and arming yourself with knowledge about all the information available about you in cyberspace.

About the author: In his role in the self storage industry, Tim Eyre helps customers care for their cherished belongings that must be put in storage. Tim regularly visits his facilities including a Philadelphia self storage center. He also was recently meeting customers and staff at the Chicago self storage center.

Think before you type when it comes to anything you do online...

Technology is great but sometimes it can get people into trouble if they misuse it or don’t take enough time and effort to use it properly.

I tend to notice little things when it comes to how people act and one of the things I tend to see more and more is how the use of email makes people lazy. I always open emails by saying “Hi Marc” or “Hey Joan” depending on who the person is and how well I know them. The nature of the correspondence also tends to dictate whether I’d start the email with “Dear Karen” if I was applying for a job for example.

Many people simply reply to an email without the opening salutation and simply start the email with their response which kind of annoys me.

How hard is it to say hi to the person you’re trading emails with?

Certainly if you’re trading a string of emails, the second and subsequent ones tend to less formal and that’s cool but for the opening one I just think it’s professional and good mannered to at least address the person you’re dealing with.

OK, perhaps that’s a small one…It just bothers me for some reason.

There are certainly much bigger issues when it comes to digital etiquette like whether or not you should be friends with your boss on Facebook for example. I guess it depends on the job you hold and how it’s perceived in that industry. If you work in a professional and old-school environment, perhaps it’s not such a great idea. But if you work in social media or in another Internet-related field, or perhaps in another funky field where technology is embraced, perhaps it’s not such a bad idea.

I guess a bigger question is how to react if you’re a manager who gets friended by a staffer or the reverse, where you’re an employee who gets friended by your boss. In these instances, I think the above-mentioned comment about the industry and job you have might help to play a part as does your actual interest in being friends with that person.

Yesterday I read a story about teachers who had been told by their school board not to become friends with students on Facebook. This one is probably a bit more obvious but I’m sure there are some teachers and other professionals who’ve gotten themselves into trouble by getting a bit too close to students or patients or other people who they should have maintained a more formal relationship with even if there was no bad intent.

These days it’s increasingly difficult to do anything that doesn’t get noticed by someone especially when whatever you’re doing is done online.

Just ask the high school secretary in Quebec who got fired from her job after it was found that she was moonlighting as an online porn star…

Whether it’s is fiddling with your iPhone or other device during meetings or your cellphone going off in a job interview, digital etiquette seems to be something that many people probably need to think a bit more about especially when they’re in an environment where people noticing how you’re acting can hurt you if it’s perceived that you’re being rude.

When it comes to social media, there’s the further realization too that much of what you do online – that is available for other people to read – is time-stamped so do you really want your boss and colleagues knowing that you’re spending your work hours playing around on non-work related social media sites?

I recently learned about a website that I hadn’t heard of before called Quora. It’s a question and answer site developed by former Facebook execs. You can check out my new Quora profile here.

How can you use Quora for your career?

Quora is a website where people ask questions and other people answer them. The goal is to provide the best answer possible for the question so that when you visit the site, you expect to view answers that are credible and useful. You can follow people and people can follow you just like do on Facebook and Twitter. So as far as your career goes, not only can you establish your credibility by posting questions and answers, you can link up with like-minded people who share the same interests as you do. I began by following topics that I’m interested in related to career and job searching, Internet marketing, investing and things of that nature. I even added fantasy sports which I also like.

Everything you do on the site such as asking and answering questions or editing existing topics gets tied back to your account so people who visit your page or follow you can check out all of your contributions.

Check out here to set up a free account and to start searching for topics (and people) who interest you.

I read an article today about how many young people are temporarily shutting off access to their social media – access to their Facebook and MySpace profiles for example – when they start looking for a job so that potential hiring managers don’t find something about that person that perhaps puts the person in a bad light.

At first glance it seems like a good idea, limiting access to information that they have willingly put online about themselves so as to not get themselves into trouble.

At a second glance though, it makes you wonder why they’d bother putting stuff in the public domain in the first place if they felt it was going to cost them a job or make them look bad in a professional manner?

These days it isn’t hard to post stuff on the Net that you might later regret. Sometimes it’s more difficult to completely erase it with the snap of a finger though so it’s best to consider this before posting anything.

With the prevalence of various social media websites, many people have come to rely on them to find a new job with varying results. LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other popular websites are certainly popular examples of websites that can help you broadcast your name and profile.

Plus, you can post your resume on all sorts of online job boards and try your luck at finding a job this way, too.

Of course, everyone else can do the same thing so it can quickly become a case of wondering how much time and effort should you place on these websites to help you take the next step in your career?

Looking at it another way, what percentage of your time should be spent utilizing these methods versus more traditional ways of finding a new job like applying for specific jobs, networking, knocking on doors and visiting companies, etc?

Ultimately, you’ll need to figure out yourself how to dedicate your time and efforts but if most or all of your time is spent utilizing only social media websites and strictly limiting your job search to using these methods, you’re severely limiting the odds of finding a new, better job.

Working in recruitment – as with any position that involves hiring staff or helping people find jobs – showed me just how many people often apply for one job and try to battle it out (figuratively of course) with all the other candidates for often just one available position.

It’s not uncommon for companies to receive hundreds and possibly thousands of applications for a job they have advertised through online job boards or in the old days, through newspaper ads.

For large high profile companies, it may be common for them to receive hundreds or thousands of applications to their website every day even when they don’t have jobs available.

How can you stand out from the pack when you simply become one of hundreds or thousands of other candidates?

Often, you can’t.

Jobs are still won and lost in face to face situations whether in the job interview, networking event or a chance meeting with a hiring manager who gets to know you in a formal or informal setting and decides to pursue you as a potential hire with their firm.

Getting out from behind your computer and showing people your personality is the way you stand out from the pack and remains the best way to separate yourself from other people applying for the same jobs you are.

Many times, I’ve received a resume from someone that seems too good to be true…

…then I meet the person face to face and realize that this is in fact the case. In other words, their resume made them look better than they actually were.

Conversely, I’ve also met people with a subpar resume who upon meeting them, cause me to realize that they are underselling themselves and perhaps need to do a better job of selling themselves honestly but with impact through their resume.

In other words, looks can be deceiving and again, it’s often the face to face meeting that ends up sorting this out.

But if you’re only using online methods to conduct your job search, you’re limiting not only your opportunities to find a new job but also your opportunities to show potential hiring managers your personality, skills and intangibles that often can’t be promoted through online means.