It’s no secret that many employers – both in online and traditional industries – conducting interviews are likely to search the Internet for information on the candidates.
Why?
Why not? Using Google, Yahoo! or other search engines to run a background check is legal, free and often more honest than a reference from a previous employer.
What are they looking for?
Anything and everything. An employer can vastly increase their frame of reference of you before you even walk in the door – possibly knowing things you wouldn’t disclose in an interview.
By assessing the candidates and putting a face and a few background details to a name beforehand, an interviewer may already have decided for or against your application. It is for this reason that personal branding is so important if you want to land your dream job.
Any offensive or off-putting information will be quickly spotted and a candidate with a better Google CV may stand a better chance of receiving the job – regardless of the impending interview.
What You Can Do to Improve Your Online Reputation:
- Join an online personal branding site in your industry.
- Make business connections online and engage with them.
- Upload your CV to a reputable site for review.
- Control your image on the Internet with online reputation monitoring software.
- Publish blog posts relevant to your industry.
- Personalise your LookupPage profile with appropriate pictures and information.
- Always be careful what you publish – nothing published on the Internet is ever truly erased forever.
- Submit links to your profiles to relevant external sites (comments, discussion boards etc.) and also link between your individual profiles.
- Be sure to distinguish between other people who share your name.
- Set your Facebook and other social networking site privacies accordingly.
- Make sure you’re easy to find, and easier to contact (especially for future job leads).
Following these guidelines will help you control what Google has to say about you – but also remember, you too can utilise Google to gain as much information about the employer or interviewer before meeting face-to-face.
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