When You Google Yourself, What Do You Find?

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If you’re looking for a job, you’re hopefully using social media, like Twitter and LinkedIn. And hopefully you’ve already Googled yourself, to see what potential employers—and yes, 89% of them are checking—might see about you.

First, you want to make sure they don’t see anything negative. Second, you want to stand out from the competition. Here’s what you need to do to solve both issues:

  1. Type your name in a search engine and see what pops up. Can you find yourself? Are you on page one or page five? Is someone with the same name outshining your good reputation with his or her less than stellar one? And what’s stopping a potential employer from thinking that that person is you?
  2. Type the name of someone who is your potential competition. This may be a colleague or a classmate, or a complete stranger who you know is vying for the same position you are. Compare their search results with yours. Does their brand outshine yours? If you answered yes, you may have lost out on a possible opportunity, all because of your search results.

Of course hiring managers shouldn’t assume anything without the facts. But in our Google-loving society, the search engine is king. So, for job seekers who want to make sure their online brands aren’t being mistaken for another, proactive measures need to be taken.

  1. Manage your online profiles. Not only should you have a profile on several online platforms, but you need to actually use these accounts. For instance, update your Twitter status often, maintain your LinkedIn profile beyond the job search and maintain iron-clad privacy settings on Facebook. If an employer researches you online, your brand will be visible, present, and hopefully positive.
  2. Create relevant content. Apart from your online networks, creating content constantly feeds information into a search engine. So, when there’s content to be found, you’re more likely to be noticeable in search results. If you blog regularly, that content is being fed into a search engine regularly. Therefore, if an employer searches for your name, the content that you’re associated with will probably show up.

How do you stand out from the competition? If you feel you could use a little help getting your name in front of the best employers, contact Morgan Hunter today and discover all that we can do for you.