Your Online Persona Could Kill Your Job Search

In hundreds of job search workshops conducted monthly, trainers and job search coaches are encouraging job seekers to audit their online profiles. Why? To find questionable material that a recruiter could use to disqualify them from possible employment.

To find a testimonial of how one's online persona could affect a future career, look no further than the questionaire floated by the Obama administration to potential hires. Some professionals, anxious to participate in the new Washington administration were a little concerned about the breadth of questions being asked.

Here were some of the sample statements job seekers had to address in the Obama questionnaire. Some were particularly interesting since the Obama campaign encouraged much of this type of online participation from supporters. The assumption was not that these answers would disqualify candidates, but that the recruiters wanted to know. Statements include:

"If you have ever sent an electronic communication, including but not limited to an email, text message or instant message, that could suggest a conflict of interest or be a possible source of embarrassment to you, your family, or the President-elect if it were made public, please describe."

"Please provide the URL address of any websites that feature you in either a personal or professional capacity (e.g. Facebook, My Space, etc.)"

"Please list, and, if readily available, provide a copy of each book, article, column, or publication (including but not limited to any posts or comments on blogs or other websites) you have authored, individually or with others. Please list all aliases or 'handles' you have used to communicate on the internet."

Imagine if every employer started to do this? The Class of 2009 should be wise and start cleaning up that online persona now before it is too late. Remember that if "friends" of yours post information online about you, such as photos etc, it may not be easy to remove once you have graduated and gone your separate ways. One of the biggest challenges I see with college students is they don't know what their online image might be. When they do find out, sometimes it is hard to get the owner of the content to do the right thing.

Does it mean that job seekers won't get hired with a compromised online persona? No it doesn't mean that. The key is to make a good faith effort to fix the issue and to avoid putting controversial material online if possible.

To clean up your online past, Google yourself periodically to see what kind of online persona or footprint you have established. Clean up anything that could kill your future career.