Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley
\nSeptember 2009 Issue
\nJuly 27, 2009<\/p>\n
Facebook, YouTube and\u2026 You, Unemployed<\/strong><\/p>\n For the past few years, I have told my students to consider carefully what they post online. Like many educators and parents, I want my students to think about their online reputations. But, the rules are changing and we\u2019re losing some control over our online selves. What others reveal about you is as important as anything you might post online.<\/p>\n \u201cMost of what I worry about, the job applicant didn\u2019t actually post.\u201d<\/p>\n As a human resource specialist for a large, national service company, the woman I was talking to hires young men and women who enter the businesses and private homes of customers. These employees represent their employer and its tech-savvy image.<\/p>\n Because I teach a professional development course for university juniors and seniors, I thought my warnings not to put too much personal information online was sufficient. I had overlooked that friends, those fun people you were at the party of the year with, can ruin your online reputation \u2014 without meaning any harm.<\/p>\n \u201cFriends tag friends in photos or videos,\u201d explained the executive. \u201cThat means someone like me searching for your name ends up seeing whatever you were doing in Cabo San Lucas last summer.\u201d<\/p>\n Tagging photos and videos means that you can enter a list of people, places, or things appearing in an online posting. A popular trend among Facebook users is posting old school photos, tagging the pictures with names of former classmates. In the past, we wrote names and dates on the back of pictures. Now, those names become part of a massive, searchable database.<\/p>\n While you might remove photos, limit your online profile to \u201cfriends,\u201d and avoid writing about your lousy days at work, your friends could still be denting your image. Friends post blogs, photos, and status updates. They even \u201ctweet\u201d on Twitter to share when they (and you) are having great fun.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople don\u2019t realize you can search anything posted almost anywhere online. What you post as private, a friend might not think twice about sharing.\u201d This pleasant, charming executive was scaring me.<\/p>\n While I understand the divisions between private and public life are increasingly blurred, it does bother me that seemingly unimportant choices can haunt us later.<\/p>\n \u201cI had someone say she was careful online. After the interview, I found pictures of her tagged on a photo-sharing site. She was wearing a t-shirt that mocked our service with some unfortunate words.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019m not sure what to tell students, now. Employers might be getting a bit overzealous with online searches, but that is unlikely to change. If anything, searching for hints of who we are is getting easier with each passing month.<\/p>\n The simple \u2014 and generally unrealistic answer \u2014 is to never do anything you might regret seeing or reading about online. The college students I teach are in a different world than the one I inhabited twenty years ago. No one at any party I attended in college had a cell phone, much less a phone with a camera and Internet connection.<\/p>\n I guess it is good that I lead a dull life, too.<\/p>\n Adults are just as likely to get a carried away online. The ease of posting videos to YouTube or quickly \u201ctweeting\u201d an update to Twitter is hard to resist. You might have the sense not to put stupidity on display, but could you resist posting a video of a stupid coworker?<\/p>\n Sometimes, the speed and ease of sharing in our virtual leads to problems.<\/p>\n Protect Your Online Persona<\/strong><\/p>\n According to the executive I met, postings about work are the most likely to hurt your career. These might even seem innocuous, such as a funny story about a difficult customer, but companies worry about being perceived as disloyal to clients.<\/p>\n It\u2019s normal to complain if you are released from a position, but complaining online is a horrible idea. Few people in management enjoy cutting personnel. They definitely won\u2019t appreciate being portrayed in a negative light. What happens if business improves and they think about rehiring employees? Would you rehire someone who insulted you in front of the entire world?<\/p>\n Searching for Yourself<\/strong><\/p>\n Narcissists \u201cGoogle\u201d their own names to feed their egos. The rest of us should be searching for ourselves to protect our reputations. While it might seem as simple as searching via Google, that might miss potential problems.<\/p>\n If you find something you believe is embarrassing or, worse, untrue, ask the original poster politely to remove the content. Be as polite as humanly possible to avoid turning a minor situation into a major mess. Most people will understand if you explain that you want to look good for customers and potential employers. It is also a nice gesture to mention that you\u2019re also checking content you post.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley September 2009 Issue July 27, 2009 Facebook, YouTube and\u2026 You, Unemployed For the past few years, I have told my students…<\/p>\n\n
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