Clean up online image to increase future employability

Use Facebook, Myspace to put your best face forward for the internship and job search aheadBy K. Leah VealNo matter which year of college they are in, students should start now to increase their marketability when seeking internships and employment. Using the internet to leverage skills now is the best choice instead of goofing off on Myspace posting pictures of you freak-dancing at a nightclub.Veronica Clyde, author of Spark Your Career in Magazines has similar advice in her book. “when you’re on the job hunt, be sure your online reputation doesn’t precede you,” Clyde says. “Your potential employers are probably just as Google savvy as you are, so expect that they’ll be doing their own background checks via the internet. Make sure your Myspace and Facebook profiles don’t document your drunken nights, online stalking or casual sex. Start editing your self today—those salacious toga parties could eliminate you from the running if you’re not careful.”Charlene DeGregoria, Career Counselor at NYIT’s office of Career Services suggests, “try not to post anything online that you’d be ashamed for your grandmother to see.” Not just your Myspace and Facebook are items to worry about. Any shady e-mails you send to your friends and colleagues or iffy chat sessions can also be up for grabs and found by employers. If companies want to find dirt on potential employee candidates there is always a way to find it.DeGregoria added, “you might not have anything that you’re embarrassed about on your Myspace or Facebook but there can also be things written about you online as well. The internet has become an intimate tool for finding out about people.”In many cases, friends and people you know can gossip about you on their blogs with information that may or not be true, with or without your permission. The possibilities are endless and often times out of our control.Luckily, there are options for quick and mostly easy internet image overhauls for students who do have online behavior that they wouldn’t be proud to show to their family or future employers. First, delete anything that is of questionable behavior including photos, rants and your angry life story.Second, Google yourself and see what turns up. If its something that is written about you by a third party whom you know and you think that it would cast you in a negative light, talk to them and attempt to get it removed. If they don’t do so promptly and permanently, you can threaten them with a libel suit, without even hiring a lawyer. If that doesn’t work and what’s written about you is extremely damaging you should consider hiring a lawyer and taking action.Third, and most importantly, prevent these problems from happening in the first place by not even posting your life and wild experiences online. Instead, write in a journal, make a computer photo album that only you can have access to and have photo-sharing parties with your friends with hard copy photos. Set ground rules for sharing photos with third parties. Have a serious talk with your friends and express your concerns about posting compromising photos online. Ask them to respect your wishes not to have them post pictures of you online. You have to take a stand somewhere, and when your reputation is at stake it is very important.“You always want to put your best foot forward and you can do things to develop positive profiles that will support why you’d be a good candidate for the type of jobs or people you want to impress. It might be just as fun to do that as oppose to possibly having a negative profile of yourself,” DeGregoria said.She also gave tips for students on how to go about creating a new positive Internet persona. “If they have creativity, maybe they’re poetic, maybe they have art work they’ve done or maybe they have some other expressive representation of their genius. They could put their portfolio on the internet.”DeGregoria added, “It’s all the same, whether you’re searching for a part-time job now or an internship or down the road two or three years, it’s not that long away. Things don’t go away on the Internet, they’re with you forever, no matter how many years have passed you might feel like, ‘that was in high school when I did that’ sometimes those things might come back to haunt you.”She also noted that there are legality issues that arise when employers snoop into information about you online. How far are they allowed to go when using information again you? Those are also questions and concerns you can explore and research.There are so many more tasteful ways that you to get your Myspace and Facebook fix without risking your reputation. Think twice before posting those half clothed photos of yourself and instead how about uploading those scenic Central Park photos you took last week?