Google your name. What do you find? If you are lucky, you have found a lot of the really cool and awesome things you have done. You have found your Facebook page, your Twitter page, and even your LinkedIn profile.
But what if you Google your name, and you do not find anything? What does that tell someone who is looking for you for a job search, or to hire you as a consultant? Even worse, what if you Google your name, and you find a lot of photos and inappropriate jokes? What does that tell your potential employer or client?
It is an old, tired cliché, but it still fits: you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Only now, you made your first impression the minute someone tried to Google your name to find out a little more about you. You made your first impression on this new person, and you never even had a chance to meet them.
In the age of search engines and social media, people can find out all kinds of things about you when they Google your name. While we do not want to make it sound like you cannot have any fun ever again, we want to emphasize that it is important to keep your nose as clean as possible. You never know what someone might find when they Google your name.
Google Your Name for Job Search Success
What will a hiring manager see when they try to Google your name? You want them to find the best you possible. You want to make sure your LinkedIn profile is up to date, your Facebook profile is free of "those" kinds of pictures, and that you have a blog that showcases your intelligence and experience.
If you do not have those kinds of profiles, or they are not very visible, try some reverse SEO and push the negative results down off the front page by pushing up the positive ones. With a little reverse search engine optimization, you can make sure the hiring managers and HR professionals find just the right thing when they research your name in the search engines.
Promote Your Success in Search Engines with Social Media Marketing
When someone tries to Google your name, the first thing you want them to see is your portfolio of your work. This could be on a blog post, a Facebook or LinkedIn page, or even a Flickr page.
For example, professional photographers love it when people Google their name. The first thing people find is samples of work, which the photographer has posted on Flickr, Picasa, or SmugMug. Better yet, someone searching a photographer within search engines might find the photographer's blog, a WordPress template featuring some of their best work. They will love her work and call her for a photo shoot.
Writers especially love it when people find them on Google, because everything they have ever posted on the web will help with their search engine placement. Every blog post, guest blog post, and reprinted article shows up. Believe me, nothing excites a writer more than seeing his or her name on the front page of the search engines.
How you rank on the search engines can often mean the difference between getting a job or not, getting hired or not, landing a gig or not. How you manage your social network profile can make a big difference. You need to figure out what your personal brand is going to be, and how you want to represent that brand online.
But if you are not sure what kind of brand you are already presenting to people, Google your name and see what you can find. You may be pleasantly surprised.
