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GET A KICKASSONLINE REPUTATIONGO enlisted the help of Wayne Denner, who has spent over 15 years in therapidly changing digital landscape to share his ideas and experiences on howtoday’s amazing technology can be used as a tool for lifelong learning andpositive engagement in all paths of life, and gives us sound advice on ouronline presence and protecting our reputation...

Now here is the scary part. It does not stop atrecruitment. Employers are also keeping an eye onwhat their employees are posting and

commenting on, online. So onceyou’ve landed that dream job,

your online presence may stillbe monitored, with 8% ofcompanies having fired anemployee for inappropriateonline use.If you’ve never checked

what is out there on theinterwebs about yourself, Isuggest you pick upyour smartphone,open your

favourite search engineand type in your name. Youwill then be able to review thesearch results, publicly available

for all to see - based on your name.

WHAT CAN WE DO TO KEEP OUR ONLINE REPUTATION INTACT?In a nutshell, it’s important that you start to takecontrol of it. In today’s world -onlinereputation matters. #Fact. So, here are a couple of handy tips,

which will help keep it in shape:

#1 GOOGLE YOURSELF - but notin a needy way. As a rule do thisevery few weeks and mostimportantly, before a potentialemployer carries out their searchon you. Stay ahead of the posse -

I t may come as a surprise to some people that whenthey leave University and start applying for jobs, thatrecruiters, employers or

organisations might just carry out aquick online search on theapplicant. Yes, you. Nowthis may present anumber of problems forus digital natives,mainly because many ofus now live out our livesonline. But Wayne, I hear you

say, there couldn’t possiblybe anything negative oruntoward about me online? Orcould there be? That was exactlywhat one former teenage YouthPolice Commissioner, Paris Brown (17)thought. Paris was forced to quit her high profile,opportunity-of-a-lifetime role over ‘offensive’ tweets shehad made at only 14 years old. Her comments onTwitter came back to haunt her just as she was beginninga career which would have opened doors for her aroundthe world. Yes, my friends, what you post online staysonline and what’s more, over half of recruiters are nowsearching personal social networking sites whenconsidering hiring you. Here’s the interesting bit. According to Execu.net,

executive recruiters have adopted a ‘googling’ as bestpractise for job candidates. A further 90% report thatthey type a candidate’s name into an online search tofind out more information, beyond what is on thecandidate’s resume. According to the same survey, 50%of recruiters have eliminated a job candidate because ofinformation they found publicly on the Internet.

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it’s agood ideato set up a

GoogleAlertonyourname

whichwill notify

you, via email,should any new

content about youappear online.

#2 PRIVACY IS KEY - keep your personalinformation private – When it comes to

keeping stuff private on social networks it’sharder than you think. And you would beright in thinking you might need a PHDwith platforms such as Facebook changingthe rules about how you can protectyourself and your content. That being saidthere is no excuse for doing nothing about

your privacy settings. Pay attention to thecontent you upload to social-networking sitesand adjust the privacy settings accordingly tosuit who you want to be able to view andpotentially share it on.

If you use mobile apps for socialnetworking, it’s also important that youvisit the privacy settings on these, asthey may be different to your moretraditional web based platform.

#3 TAGGING - Even if you are taking care tokeep your own privacy in check on socialnetwork websites, it can be somewhat difficultto manage the content others will post upon you and tag you in – and this can causesome serious problems. Pay close attentionto the images your friends are postingonline and tagging you in and also thecomments they are associating you with and

remove any tags which are embarrassing ornegative, even if they’re ‘funny’. Don’t get

caught like a recent Burger King employee in Japanwho got sacked after a friend/fellow worker

photographed him lying on a pile of burger bunsand posted it on Twitter. Not too clever.

#4 GENERATE POSITIVE CONTENT - as a whole weneed more positive content to be generated viasocial media. Way too many people use platforms

as their own personal soap box to rant and raveabout all sorts of crazy things. Posting on your

interests, or careers you would like topursue, connecting and followingpeople who inspire you and achievegood things are all ways to boostyour reputation and improveopportunities online.

#5 OVERSHARING - Way too manyof us are sharing absolutely

everything going onin our lives viasocial media. As

a rule of thumb, bean Internet wise guy and keep views

you may have in relation to religion or politics offsocial networking websites. Equally, be careful aboutsharing content which may be unsuitable and joininggroups which in hindsight might be of an inappropriatenature.In regard to your online reputation, it’s smart to start

as you mean to go on. Start taking action - cleaning upany current material which is out there now andthinking about ways to build and improve your imageonline. Think about the content which is associatedwith you. What’s online needs to tell a positive storyabout who you are. The Internet is like a library. It catalogues everything

you post online into an archive and it only takessomeone to carry out some basic key word searcheswith your name, and voila up comes information onyou. When it comes to employability opportunities thiscould mean the difference between the job of a lifetimeor stacking shelves. Not that there’s anything wrongwith stacking shelves. If you like shelf stacking.It’s easy in a digital world to shoot yourself in the foot

online or just not manage your online reputation, andthe repercussions can be brutal. On the positive sidethough, it’s all down to you. You’re in control. In thisworld reputationcounts for a lot, isdifficult to buildand easy to lose.So look after itlike your mostprized possession,which is probablyyour iPhone.Yeah, look afterit like youriPhone. l

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INFO:To find out more about Wayne Denner tel: 028 9581 6717, visit Beatthecyberbully.comor follow him @waynedenner

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