What Is Your Online Image Saying About You?

When done correctly, building your professional brand and image online can be an asset but if done incorrectly it can damage your reputation, undermine your expertise and ultimately prevent you from achieving your professional goals. It’s a good idea to review your online profiles, update them with your most recent experience and accomplishments and check for potentially damaging information.

Start with taking a good hard look at your online presence. Everything online is public and accessible by coworkers, bosses and potential employers. Just because you only make your profile available to ‘friends’ doesn’t stop them from copying, printing or sharing that information with others. Look at it from an outside perspective.

Once you put information out there on the web chances are you can kiss any hope of retracting it good-bye. Don’t post in anger, altered states or excitement. Yes, that’s right, excitement. If you get an amazing new job offer don’t immediately go blasting it on your profile only to have your boss see it. The offer could fall through and if your boss sees your post I don’t think they’ll be too happy about it and it may cost you your current job too.

Keep your online profiles, pages, blog etc. up to date and relevant. You increase your chances of being noticed by recruiters and hiring managers if you maintain the accuracy of the information you post. Don’t consider your professional networking and image complete once you set-up the accounts. You need to put forth some time and effort to maintain them which will pay off for you in the long run.

It’s also a good idea to Google yourself once in a while to see what others are saying about you. If you do come across damaging information you can contact the individual that posted the information and ask them to remove it. If that doesn’t work you can contact the website and ask them to remove it. There are also reputation repair companies that claim to reduce or eliminate negative information linked to you online.

These few simple steps will help you keep your online image relevant, accurate and professional. If you still need help consider hiring a professional to assist you.

Megan Koehler is a professional resume writer and personal branding expert at Great Resumes Fast. For a FREE LinkedIn profile analysis email megan@greatresumesfast.com or for a FREE resume analysis email your resume to info@greatresumesfast.com.