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July 08, 2006

Your Online Persona

Probably the hottest topic in recruitment right now, is the whole issue of online networking and what it means for job seekers. I blogged about this as a guest writer for excelera8ion and my post came at about the exact same time as this post by Todd Hilton, a Microsoft software developer who was guest posting on the Hire Calling blog.

Todd writes:

You might consider the persona you present online to be personal and none of your employer’s business, but you also need to remember that your personal actions reflect on you as a whole. At Microsoft, it’s an important part of the hiring process to make sure that candidates are compatible with our company values. Anything you put online about yourself has the potential to influence this process, whether or not that is your intention.

I want to leave you with one final thought. Remember that whatever you post on the internet will live a long, long time...maybe even forever! Public forums, web sites, blogs and newsgroups are archived by several companies (i.e.: Google) so before you hit that “Submit” button keep in mind that whatever you just wrote will still be available in 1, 2, 5, 10 years.

That's really good advice and I think everyone serious about managing their career effectively should frame that last sentence and put it near their PC!

Posted by Louise at July 8, 2006 03:30 PM