Job hunting: Maintaining the perfect online presence

The exhaustive task of maintaining the perfect online presence in todays’ ever digital world is a daunting and sometimes a stressful task to manage. Odds are someone is searching the web for you right now, or at least has looked you up fairly recently. Do you know what they have learnt? Better yet, do you have control of the pages and profiles they visit? If not, it is time to take your online reputation into your own hands instead of leaving it to Google. Here’s some tried and tested examples on how to do so:

Why first impressions matter on the Internet

It is not a secret that friends, ‘nosy’ family members, and potential employers will all take to Google, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to look for more information about you to see if what you have put on your CV equates to your online profile/personality. In the case of family and friends, they already know the ‘real you’ but when it comes to potential employers, it is important to make sure that the things they find about you, are representative of who you are.

You don’t have to be a job-seeker to understand the importance of your online reputation, though. You could be a freelancer or entrepreneur who would like to control their image, or just someone who doesn’t want your name dragged through the mud. It may seem that the wall of Google search results when you search for yourself is impossible to control, but there are some clever things you can do. In this post, we’ll tackle some of them, and by the end you’ll have a better picture of what people find when they search for you. With work, you’ll even have better control over what they find.

Step One: Find out where you stand (and erase embarrassments)

Before we get started, it’s a good idea to see what others see when they search for you. Then we can tweak what we find so it is representative of the ‘you’ that you want the public to see, not just what Google collects.

Search for yourself on Google and Facebook

Let’s start with Google. Log out of your Google account(s) or use an Internet browser where you are not logged in – Google personalises results based on your account activity – and search for your name. Don’t bother going more than a few pages in, make a note of what you see. Remember, that making a good first impression requires actually making an impression. While turning up nothing means no one will find anything bad, it also means they will not learn anything good about you, and that can potentially be bad too.

Next, let’s check Facebook. You can view your public self on any social media platform by doing the following simple steps:

1. Log out (or use a browser that’s logged out) and search for yourself by name. Even if you don’t use your name as your account ID, it may be easy to find yourself with a quick name search. Check to see if that is the case, and see what is visible.
2. Log back in and view your profile ‘as public.’ Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ all make it easy to do this from your profile page. This way you can see what your profile looks like to someone who stumbles on you, even if you’re not easily found.

Clean up any results you don’t like

Now that you have seen what others see about you, it is time to get rid of anything you don’t like. You probably won’t get an opportunity to explain the ‘bad stuff’ away in a phone or in-person interview. Whether the behaviour is your own, someone trolled you and set up fake profiles to defame you, or someone’s been impersonating you online, here’s how to handle it for each service:

• Google and other Search Engines: If you found the offending results at Google or another search engine, ask them to remove the pages from their results. Google has a process for this, and another for Google Images, but they only apply to pages that have been taken down, or old, cached versions of pages that are still up-it’s not for pulling down any old page. DuckDuckGo has a feedback form, as does Bing, where you can submit takedown requests for non-legal reasons.
• Facebook: Deleting your account is the best option (so no one takes screenshots or makes your private posts public without you knowing) but if that’s too extreme for you, there is the option to change post visibility individually, or can go to Privacy Settings > Limit Past Post Visibility to hide everything at once. Get familiar with Facebook’s privacy options. Make sure private posts are truly private, the only things public are the ones that showcase your public persona, and always think before you post.
• Twitter: Twitter is easy, just look at your profile by name. If your profile is public, everyone can see it, and if you use your real name as your handle, it is easy to find. You can take your account private, but that won’t stop public users from quoting you (although it does stop retweets) or responding to you publicly. Remember, Twitter is probably the most public of all networks. And again. Think before you tweet.
• Google+: Your posts at Google+ aren’t as important as your Google profile. Hide anything you saw but wanted private when you viewed your profile earlier. Make useful details (a contact email address, links to your portfolio or personal web site, etc) are visible. Create topical circles for sharing and familiarise yourself with Google+’s privacy settings.
• LinkedIn: If you post articles to LinkedIn, make sure they are professional in nature and relevant to the public persona you want to put forward. While you are there; go ahead and fill out your profile with additional details: odds are your profile may be incomplete, or the last time you updated it was the last time you changed jobs.

If all else fails, you can turn to services that promise to protect your online reputation. They’re usually effective, but they all cost money. For example, BrandYourself and Reputation.com will all help streamline this process for you.

Step Two: Beef up your online presence with better profiles

Now that the bad stuff has been ditched, it is time to build up the good stuff. Potential employers, business contacts, and people you network with will look you up anyway, so make sure what they find is what you want them to know.

1. Spruce up your social networks. Your social networks can be valuable tools if you use them. Update your LinkedIn profile with your interests and skills, not just your work history. Add some relevant interests to Facebook and leave them public. You may even want to like a few job or industry-related pages, or create a Facebook page specifically for your professional persona. Upload a good-looking profile photo to your Facebook, Twitter, and Google profiles, and consider filling out your photo gallery with flattering shots of you, your work, or even your projects and things you’ve worked on. Use every opportunity to showcase your skills, talents and interests, whether it is in the “Likes” section of your Facebook profile, or the photos in your Instagram account.
2. Sign up for new services that best showcase your skills. For example, if you want your indie film to get attention or you want to expand the audience of your video podcast, consider signing up for Vimeo as well as YouTube. You get access to a whole new community, and much more exposure. Are you a writer? Consider a Tumblr account, even if you already blog at WordPress. If you’re a photographer and want to build a portfolio, consider hosting your photos at Flickr or Picasa to get the most exposure and make it easy for people to find you. At the very least, you can direct visitors to the service you regularly use.

Step Three: Keep your best foot forward

By now, you’ve done your homework to find out what other people find when they look for you, cleaned up your profiles, and added content to the web that you control so people only see what you want them to learn about you. As you go forward with your shiny, professional online persona, make sure to keep it clean by following the fundamental rule of sharing on the internet: don’t post it if you don’t want it to be public. The Internet is a big place with a long memory.

Keep in mind that your ideal online first impression doesn’t have to be a perfect, rosy picture of your personality, just a truthful one. If putting your best foot forward keeps you from being a jerk, then great, but don’t let it stifle your brilliance or keep you from expressing your opinion and being true to your ideals. After all, those are the things we want people to learn about when they go looking.

By sticking to these three steps, it will help you maintain the online presence that won’t make potential employers ‘run for the hills,’ after the first glance of your profile and/or online presence.

Good luck. xo