Is Your Public Image a Liability?

The Savvy Networker
Liz Ryan

Is Your Public Image a Liability?

Pretty much everyone in the developed world has an online presence. It makes it easier for us to find long-lost schoolmates and summer-camp friends, among other uses. But a little public image goes a long way.

You're on Display

A majority of employers now routinely check their job candidates' MySpace, Linkedin and Facebook profiles for any impropriety, prior to making an offer. Can you blame them? It's not so much that your prospective employer worries about your keg parties or those photos of you with your favorite bong. It's that they worry, with reason, about your judgment in throwing these items online for anyone to see.

If you're so free with the shadier aspects of your private life, what might you say to the employer's biggest customer?

If you're job-hunting, clean up your online act, pronto. That means sanitizing your online profiles and cutting loose from Facebook friends whose profiles might tarnish yours. If you've written things on online forums that you'd rather not see the light of day any longer, write to the forum administrators. Ask them to remove those posts. The past can't be changed, but it can be spruced up a bit.

Review Your Blog Activity

Do you think your blog is a secret place to share your most private thoughts? Don't kid yourself. Anyone with an ounce of Internet-sleuthing ability can put your name to your blog without much trouble.

Not only can employees be fired for blog posts that their employers don't appreciate, but entrepreneurs can lose business via thoughtless blogging. If their blog entries aren't synched with their clients' views, clients will vote with their feet.

Blogs are great, but they're prone to rants and not-always-ready-for-prime-time editorial content. If you really want to preserve your innermost thoughts, you might need an old-fashioned paper journal.

Search for Yourself

Your driving tickets, your fines for barking dogs, your awe-inspiring or guffaw-inspiring finish times in the last couple of road races you ran -- all these things are available online. To see what others can find out about you with a click, do a search on your own name via Google, Yahoo!, or any other search engine.

If you're active in one or more Yahoo! groups for online discussion, pay close attention to your postings. Spam bloggers known as "sploggers" have taken to grabbing whole chunks of Yahoo! groups discussion and adding it to their blogs in order to earn money by sticking related ads next to the posts. That means that your wholesome posting recommending literature for middle-school girls might show up next to a bunch of splog ads proclaiming "Girls! Girls! Girls!"

If you run into that problem, you may have to write to the blogger's administrator to get the blog shut down. That's a pain, but it works.

As long as you're not Paris Hilton or one of her ilk, you're in charge of your own public image. Use your "screen time" wisely!

Liz Ryan is a 25-year HR veteran, former Fortune 500 VP and an internationally recognized expert on careers and the new millennium workplace. She is the author of "Happy About Online Networking," a popular speaker on workplace and work/life topics, and the leader of the global Ask Liz Ryan online community. Contact Liz at liz@asklizryan.com

Source: http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/career-experts-is_your_public_image_a_liability-35

WITH THIS IN MIND:

Bob Atchison and Rob Moshein made a conscious decision to smear the personal and professional reputation of Oma Hamou by publishing vicious lies about her.

Source: https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=30170059&postID=4111136724675290033