Maintaining Your Online Presence

Often an employer will check a potential employee’s online presence. This means that the employer will scan the internet for as much information about you as possible. You must make sure your online presence is professional and worthy of the employer’s standards. Take these steps into consideration:

Step 1: Take an inventory of yourself

The first step in maintaining your online presence is to search and scan for your name. This will help you know what employers are reading about you online. An easy way to do this is to Google yourself. Type your name into the Google search engine (or any search engine) and discover what comes up about you. Do not forget to search Google images as well, and try different variations of your name or nicknames.

Step 2: Clean up your image

Once you have a solid grasp on your cyberspace image, you can begin to clean it up. You may have found a not-too-flattering picture or an inappropriate nickname listed on a friend’s website. When job searching it is key to ask that friend to take the picture down or change the nickname to your real name.

Another big piece to cleaning up your online image has to do with social networking sites. Sites like Facebook and MySpace can be very damaging to your chances of landing that perfect job if you have inappropriate material on your homepage. Many employers create accounts themselves on these sites and scan the accounts of potential employees regularly. Check everything from pictures to quotes to messages. The best thing to do might even be to hide your account or stop using it until your job search process is over.

Step 3: Building positive material

Now that you have scanned your online image and cleaned up those inappropriate aspects, it is time to start building yourself up. The first item on the agenda is to think about your contact information. If the email address you are sending to employers is something like hotchick or fratboy, please change it. A simple address with your name or initials works great. Another idea with email is to add a signature line to the bottom of your messages. Include your name, phone number, email address, and your expected graduation date.

Something else to consider is that having nothing online is not necessarily a good thing. It is not enough to just clean up the inappropriate material, but you must also create positive material online. When employers scan the internet to find out about you, they want to know what it is you have done. Some simple things to consider here are:

Ask your professor if you can put a project you just completed on the course website
Volunteer to write an article or blog for a campus organization you belong to and post it on the organization’s website
If you know that your picture will end up on a website, wear something professional
Join a professional organization and become a member of their online directory

Step 4: Maintaining a professional image

Once you have started your position, be sure to read the internet or technology usage and corporate communication policies of your new company. Some companies may have blogging policies or other policies that you should be aware of before inadvertently “getting into trouble”. Also, it is a great idea to continue building a positive image on the internet – and remain vigilant about keeping content that may not represent you well out of sight.

*Material adapted from Getting from College to Career: 90 Things to Do Before You Join the Real World by Lindsey Pollak