Google is my Resume

Found a great post about how to make your permanent record work for you instead of against you.

A new study summarized by CNET says that one in five employers look up job candidates online. In your industry, you’d best bet everyone at the company is not only googling you, but digging up your MySpace and your blog as well. That doesn’t mean you have to stop having fun; it just means you have to take the following steps to keep what’s none of their business out of their business.

This is where students lack of judgement comes into play. Many students don’t really understand what the word ‘public’ means anymore. Somehow they have this strange belief that if they don’t talk about their MySpace account with adults, then it’s basically invisible.

It’s not.

I believe that a key technology skill for students to learn is social networking in a public environment. If you know that the college admissions department or job recruiter is going to be Google’ing you, then you can make that work to your advantage.

As Nick says towards the end of the article, “When you have a polished blog that shows your professional expertise in a presentable manner, Google is your friend.”

3 Comments

Andrew Pass
4/3/2007

Steve, I think you’re right on here. People want to be around productive individuals. Google is one way to measure productivity. For if somebody doesn’t do anything they are not going to have much on Google. If someone writes well and becomes involved in numerous organizations they will come up on Google.

By the way for any single people who might be reading this it’s also an interesting response when somebody asks for your phone number, “Google Me!!”

Andrew Pass
http://www.pass-ed.com/blogger.html

Jeff Branzburg
4/4/2007

re: “This is where students lack of judgement comes into play.”

It will be interesting to see if this is an issue when the students of today are the employers of tomorrow. We, today’s adults, bring a certain view of “public” to the table; when today’s students are the adults and therefore the employers they will bring a view molded by their experiences today. Will that change what’s acceptable? I think so.

Then again, that’s years from now, and the whole landscape – technologically, communicatively – will be vastly different in ways we can’t even imagine today.

 Chris Champion
4/5/2009

@langwitches Re: FB – Steve Dembo does a great presentation called “New Permanent Record” – teachers should see it too http://bit.ly/nfVp7

Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI

Leave a comment