Career Article 174:
Digital Dirt

By Tamara Dowling, CPRW

Searching for your digital dirt is now a common part of the employment prescreening process. What is digital dirt? It consists of unfavorable videos, photos, and other content created by you and about you that is posted on the Internet. Google your name and see what dirt you can dig.

A prospective employer or recruiter may find your seemingly harmless posts about a sports team. Wow, Chris left 213 comments about this year's Kansas State football team this month... all with time and date stamps during common working hours. Or, that's an interesting photo of Chris at the Vampire Lizards concert. What is he smoking? That's just enough info to end your candidacy for the job.

Besides the obvious like YouTube videos, Facebook profiles, postings on blogs, reviews, and public records online, also consider what others may be posting about you. You may be included in an embarrassing photo posted on someone else's site. Your name may be referenced on other sites. If you are listed on a roster or a newsletter that is posted online, that becomes part of your digital footprint. Depending on the context, it could be digital dirt.

Here are quick tips to take care of your digital dirt.

Investigate

Research is simple. Go to the major search engines (Google.com and Yahoo.com) and type your name in quotation marks. You can research blogs by visiting sites like Pubsub.com. Pubsub will alert you when your name is found on a blog or online news group. Evaluate what you uncover. Does this reflect the image you want to convey to potential employers and business associates? Try asking the publisher of this digital dirt to remove the unflattering information.

Clean up your social networking and personal websites

First tidy up your profile on your personal websites and social networking sites. Next, search for your name on sites such as Facebook. You may be included in other people's pages. Ask friends to remove unprofessional comments or photos. Or, ask to have settings changed so that those viewing the pages are limited to confirmed friends.

The good outweighs the bad

Build up your credibility and your good name by increasing the amount of positive information about yourself. If you don't already have one, create a webpage or blog. What a great way to create positive energy for yourself. If you want to have a personal section, you may keep that information hidden from the public. Next increase the number of links to your webpage, and your Facebook and LinkedIn profile pages. The more links into those pages will give those pages higher ranking with the search engines.

Keeping it Clean

Be aware that you are leaving a digital footprint. If you are writing a review about a restaurant, consider using an alias if you feel it is not something you would want a prospective employer to read. If you are posting a well-written review on Amazon.com about a business-related book, that may be a credibility-boosting opportunity. Take advantage of the Internet as a tool to enhance your personal brand. With these tips you'll have a sparkling digital image, with little notice of digital dirt.