Archive for 'first impressions'

Ego Surfing and Your Online Presence Part 1

To ego surf means to search the internet for your own name to see what information comes up. Begin the search at Pipl.com then follow up with a search at Google.com. Next, add one of the meta-search engines. Meta-search engines gather search results from many search engines at one time pulling the results together for review. Try Mamma.com, Dogpile.com, or Metasearch.com.

On a side note, a variation of meta-search that you may find useful is Chimby.com which is specifically for searching career advice-related articles. Additionally, meta-searching job openings can be achieved through SimplyHired.com and Indeed.com.

Back to ego surfing…there are a couple of possibilities you might learn about your online presence. One is that nothing comes up about you and the other is that negative info comes up.

If nothing comes up then it is time to embark upon a web presence campaign! A simple way to begin is with Twitter.com which is a mini-blogging platform. It is called a mini-blog because users are limited to posting messages of only 140 characters in length at a time. People simply sign up for a user name, then they begin posting messages–or “tweeting.” For career advancement purposes, remember to post tweets that reveal your specialized knowledge and skills, AND that showcase your personality.

Keep in mind, Twitter is a double edged sword. The downside is that it is very easy to send off scathing or sarcastic one-liners that do not demonstrate the best a you have to offer. The upside is that with very little, but consistent, effort you can build a web presence and begin fruitful dialog with others.

Another easy way to get started is to create a LinkedIn.com and/or Plaxo.com profile. LinkedIn is a key professional networking website. Recruiters and human resources professionals are getting quite accustomed to checking LinkedIn to find talent and to vet individual applicants before beginning an in-person dialog. LinkedIn also offers a question and answer area that is a great place to network.

Plaxo is also very good, but for different reasons. Most useful is that Plaxo enables people to automatically see what you are posting on the net via your “pulse stream.” So if you post an update to your blog or submit a new bookmark to your favorite bookmarking site, it will show up on your pulse stream which members of your Plaxo network will see. Plaxo also features the ability to make a business side of your profile and a personal side of your profile so that you may divide up who gets to see what. Plaxo started out as a web-based contact manager to keep address and information up-to-date, so it does that very well, too.

Creating LinkedIn and Plaxo profiles will be somewhat familiar because they resemble a resume format. One big difference is the ability to post a picture with a profile. You may want to have professional photos taken or otherwise use a suitable digital photo for upload. Adequate photo editing for online resizing of digital photos can be done for free at ShrinkPictures.com. I suggest the “create avatar” tool for use with Twitter, LinkedIn, and Plaxo profiles. This tool will shrink the photo down to a perfect size for posting online with just one click so you do not have to worry about defining dimensions or file size. By the way, avatar is an image, symbol, or graphic that represents a person online. You can get very creative with your avatars, but remember for career advancement purposes you will need to maintain a professional image.

For info on what to do when negative info comes up when ego surfing, check back here Friday or better yet click the blue RSS button at the upper left of the page. Thanks!

Help Others Help You

Yesterday something happened to me that happens all the time. I met a new person and she happened to be looking for a job. I asked her what kind of job she was looking for and she curled her lip, shrugged her shoulders and said, “anything really.”

Okay, I’ll admit this is a pet peeve for me. Here she is looking for a job and any job will do. Do you believe that? Yeah, me neither. I’m sure anybody she’s networking with feels like they have to do a lot of work to learn anything about her and her skills and ambition. My guess is her cover letters and resumes and any applications that she is putting out there are very nonspecific too. This is likely the main reason that her job search has gone on nine months so far with no offers which is certainly a source of frustration for this bright, young woman.

Of course I can’t resist talking to anyone about their career. So I asked a few more questions and found out that she was a burned out elementary school teacher who had been teaching for three years. She felt like she was a statistic because she had heard reports that so many new teachers only last three to five years in the field. I told her that might be true but most people these days are only in any job for three to five years before being let go or otherwise choosing to move on anyway. I also tried to reassure her that sometimes you don’t know if you will like a profession until you’re in it but you can always learn something from it.

As we continued to visit, finally her eyes lit up about something. What she really wanted was to start her own business! She had already done a lot of research into potential businesses and was continually drawn to ideas centered on working with children. She also wanted to continue to use her curriculum development and organizational skills. Now we were onto something! Better yet her education and time teaching would nicely support such a business endeavor which was really important to her.

So by the end of the conversation she had a new person in her personal network. I was also able to provide her with several resources to check out. We also had an impromptu brainstorming session which resulted in several business concepts that she is excited to research further.

Moral of the story: knowing what you want sure helps other people help you…even people you just met.

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