July 30 2009

Who's Googling Whom?

A recent Washington Post article reports that a growing number of DC-area private schools are warning students about the risks of making too-personal postings to blogs, message boards, and Facebook.

We'll elaborate on that point in a moment.

What sparked our interest for job seekers was this whole matter of Googling. Just how often are recruiters Googling job candidates?

According to a 2005 survey of 102 executive recruiters by ExecuNet, an executive job-search and networking organization, 75% of recruiters use search engines to uncover information about candidates, and 26% of recruiters have eliminated candidates because of information found online. What does your online profile look like? Try doing a Google search on your name and see what comes up. Then go to Yahoo and enter your name in quotes in the search box. Does anything come up? Check the contents thoroughly to make sure it won't hurt your job search chances.

College admissions officers have more than enough to keep themselves busy without taking on the task of Googling every student who applies to their school. Hiring managers, as we noted above, have a different take on this matter.

Job seekers and prospective students alike need to consider the tone of their messages posted on discussion boards. Those bound for college should know that admissions officers do read admissions boards, especially those devoted to particular programs or schools. While they're more concerned about general admissions issues, they may remember someone with an arrogant or abusive writing style. We should all mind our manners on discussion boards. While we may be seething with anger over a present matter, do we want an angry message – with the potential to be kept online in perpetuity – to accidentally become part of the first impression we make to a gatekeeper?

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