Speaking (yesterday) of the effect of cyber information on hiring brought a sister subject to mind—is it you or someone else? Or are you invisible?

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal throws a spotlight on the problem.

“In the age of Google, being special increasingly requires standing out from the crowd online. Many people aspire for themselves — or their offspring — to command prominent placement in the top few links on search engines or social networking sites’ member look-up functions. But, as more people flood the Web, that’s becoming an especially tall order for those with common names. Type “John Smith” into Google’s search engine and it estimates it has 158 million results.”

Vanity-wise my immediate reaction is who cares, but professionally it’s a real problem…

“More than 80% of executive recruiters said they routinely use search engines to learn more about candidates, according to a recent survey by executive networking firm ExecuNet.”

Not standing out is difficult, not being found can make recruiters doubt your veracity, and getting married can be a real career hit

“Before Abigail Garvey got married in 2000, anyone could easily Google her. Then she swapped her maiden name for her husband’s last name, Wilson, and dropped out of sight.

In Web-search results for her new name, links to Ms. Wilson’s epidemiology research papers became lost among all manner of other Abigail Wilsons, ranging from 1980s newspaper wedding announcements for various Abigail Wilsons to genealogy records listing Abigail Wilsons born in the 1600s and 1700s. When Ms. Wilson applied for a new job,interviewers questioned the publications she listed on her resume because they weren’t finding the publications in online searches, Ms. Wilson says.”

There are many thing you can do going forward, “Ms. Wilson now goes by “Abigail L. Garvey Wilson” when she publishes scientific papers.”

“”Any time you can distinguish yourself with a distinctive name or a distinctive characteristic that sticks out in people’s minds, that’s going to be the best solution,” says Matt Cutts, a Google software engineer.”

I think the lesson managers need to take away from all this is to remember that as all encompassing as the Net seems to be, and as good as search functions seem to be, “Seem is applied to something that has an aspect of truth and probability.”

It’s not a definite and certainly not an absolute—meaning that when considering information found, or not found, though search you should keep the salt handy and use it liberally.

Your comments-priceless

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 31st, 2007 at 11:14 am and is filed under Business info, Communication, Hiring, Leadership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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