Your personal brand online

Looking for a great new role that matches your career aspirations as a working dad?  

You’ll have polished your CV, updated your LinkedIn profile and registered with some job sites. But there’s something else you need to consider. Your personal brand online.

Google your name

If you’ve ever appointed a new person to your team, you’ll know that something most hiring managers do is to put the lead candidate’s name into Google.  

Have you checked what comes up when searching on your name? These days, your personal ‘brand’ online could be the difference between getting a job or losing out.  

Social media settings

Make sure that your Facebook privacy settings are locked down. When looking at your own page, there’s an option to ‘view as a visitor’ which will show you what someone who isn’t a Facebook friend sees.  

It’s definitely not ideal for them to see pictures of you on a stag do, or from a mad night out 15 years ago.  

Change your settings so that the bare minimum is public – just your name and your profile pictures. Do double check that you’re happy with all of these. It’s easy to delete them if not. 

On Twitter, many high-profile people have been caught out by posts from their past. Delete any tweets that could be seen as controversial or overly opinionated.  

Remember that Google searches all the social media sites so anything linked to your name could come up in a search. 

Bad reviews

Also be aware that if you’ve been active using your own name on review sites like TripAdvisor, TrustPilot or even book or film forums, your views could come up in a search.  

An angry rant on one of these sites could be enough to make an employer think twice about appointing you. 

Press articles

The good thing about social media sites is that you own your content and can delete or alter it as you like. But what if you have been subject to negative press attention – either through work or in your home life? 

Unfortunately, there’s no way to make a site remove content about you. You can ask, of course, but often if the story is in the public interest, it will stay where it is.  

The best thing to do in this situation is to push the content further down the google search page, by making sure there is newer, more relevant content that the search engine can present. 

Blogs

Blogging is a great way to do this, and if you blog about a professional topic it could actually help your chance of getting the job. You can either create your own website or create posts via LinkedIn. You could also see whether magazines and journals in your industry run opinions and blogs from readers.  

Creating your own website is very simple with providers like Wix and Wordpress. You could even take the opportunity to create an online portfolio – again a big plus point in landing you that new role.  

Good luck!   

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