Protecting your online profile

Publish date	2007-09-20
Available Articles	Full articles without membership

Stacy Snyder couldn’t have foreseen the consequences of dressing up as a pirate. But, in an increasingly digitised world, where people are more willing than ever to share details of their personal life on the internet, her story is an object lesson in how important it is to carefully manage how others view your online persona.

Snyder, a trainee teacher, was denied her education degree on the eve of graduation when Millersville University found pictures on her MySpace page ‘promoting underage drinking.’ As a result, the 27-year-old mother of two had her teaching certificate withheld and was granted an English degree instead. She has since filed a Federal lawsuit against the Pennsylvania university asking for her diploma and certificate along with $75,000 in damages.

Distance learners live a significant proportion degree of their life online, and are far more likely to be members of online communities than their peers in full-time, face-to-face education. Although message boards and chat rooms based around college programmes tend to be firewalled to outsiders, professional and social networking sites such as Facebook (which is aimed specifically at students), LinkedIn, Bebo and MySpace can be perused by anyone, as are weblogs. Add to that photo sharing sites such as Flickr and Ringo, and you can unwittingly provide complete strangers with a fairly rounded picture of yourself – for better or worse.

Increasingly, employers are looking up the online personas of their job candidates – or doing simple name searches on Google – to get a more complete picture.

“Many companies that recruit on college campuses have been using search engines like Google and Yahoo to conduct background checks on seniors looking for their first job,” reports the New York Times. “But now, college counsellors and other experts say, some recruiters are looking up applicants on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Xanga and Friendster, where college students often post risqué photographs and provocative comments about drinking, recreational drug use and sexual exploits in what some mistakenly believe is relative privacy.”

What are they looking for? “Red flags,” Trudy G. Steinfeld, executive director of New York University’s center for career development, told the newspaper. ‘‘Is there something about [the candidate’s] lifestyle that we might find questionable or that we might find goes against the core values of our corporation?’’

So what can e-learners do to ensure they don’t end up in the same boat as her?

Step one is to use Google yourself. “Self-Googling is not simply narcissism,” says Alexander Halavais, assistant professor of communication at the University of Buffalo School of Informatics. “People should Google themselves for the same reason corporations do – to help to manage their public face.

“Given that everyone from potential employers to potential mates is likely to be Googling you, you should have a good idea of what they will find.”

To avoid the problem in the first place, you should treat everything you post online as being fully in the public domain for years to come. A Microsoft spokesman advises: Profiles are public. Some groups allow their members to view lists of other group members’ screen names - and sometimes their e-mail addresses and full profiles as well - in a membership area on the site. Don’t post information that you’re not comfortable sharing with strangers.

“Comments you post are permanently recorded on the community site. As you get to know people, the community might begin to feel casual and familiar, and you might be tempted to talk about your kids by name, mention where you work or live, or reveal information about valuable collections in your home.”

At the very least, if you join an online forum or networking site, use a pseudonym and an email address that doesn’t contain your name.

Neil Padgett, a freelance recruitment consultant based in the City of London, also suggests students find out what kind of virtual footprint they have left behind them.

He says: “When I receive a CV, almost the first thing I do is a Google search on the potential client’s name. I would imagine this is fairly standard not just in my sector, but also in HR departments.

“I’ve never come across anything really bad, but one client had posted some fairly abusive stuff on a message board – nothing really serious, more of an online argument with someone else. He didn’t use his own name but his personal email address was quite distinctive. It may be unfair to judge someone solely on a throwaway comment, but to be honest it does turn you off putting a person up for a job. It’s worthwhile finding out where your name crops up and trying to erase anything that you feel might cast you in a bad light.”

Keywords: privacy, online communities, job candidates, Google, career development.

Source:

back