Your Best Cyber Foot

Forward: Managing Your

Online Professional
Profile

Carmen Kontur-Gronquist, the former mayor of Arlington, Ore., knows from

personal experience how dangerous it can be to not monitor one’s online

presence. Kontur-Gronquist was removed from office in February after a

firestorm erupted – much of it via the Internet – when some snooping citizens

found photos of her posing in her lingerie on one of the town’s fire trucks.

Those photos were taken in 2004, long before Kontur-Gronquist, a 42-year-

old single mother, ever considered a run for office. However, all it took was a

cruise through MySpace to find the photos, which at the time were still

available to the public.

It was a hard lesson for Kontur-Gronquist, but a good one for the rest of us.

With more and more companies conducting background checks on a regular

basis – even for long-time employees – it only makes sense to keep tabs on

what’s floating out there about you.

It goes without saying that the fastest way to give a prospective employer

information about your private life is to provide him with an e-mail address

that offers a glimpse into parts of your life that you may want to keep secret.

E-mail addresses with such monikers as racymom4477 and

divorcedhotguy2323 should definitely be avoided, as should such seemingly

harmless but needlessly telling names as iloveteddies9087. These kind of e-

mail addresses just tell the boss too much about your non-professional

image, which is not what you want him envisioning if you want a job offer.

You also need to look for any information that may be available about you

from search engines. You may need to change the content of some of your

Web pages. There may also be Internet hits that you can’t hide or don’t want

to hide – so you’d better be ready to answer them.

I had a friend who was a journalist – and a very vocal member of a political

party. He wrote a daily blog that shared his somewhat controversial thoughts

about various candidates, policies, and other issues. That he was excellent at

his job was unarguable. However, journalists are supposed to be neutral, and

his editor was pretty ticked off that her employee was out discussing his

views. She also seemed fairly annoyed that he was online for all the world to

see, spouting a philosophy that conflicted with her own.

There was no company policy that supported the editor’s demands that the

employee refrain from publicly taking a political stand. The reporter had the

First Amendment on his side, and he was allowed to continue writing his blog.

However, there is no question that his broadcast of his views, on a blog with

his name and his photo clearly displayed, had a negative impact on his career

with that company. When he ultimately chose to leave for a new job after five

years of employment, he was the only reporter on the staff who had not been

offered a merit pay raise.

 The information available about you via social networking sites can also

jeopardize your career search. Sites such as MySpace – which provided the

suicide blow to Carmen Kontur-Gronquist’s political career – can and will be

trolled by prospective employers. If you have information that you don’t want

others to see, don’t make it public. And beware – even if your site is a model

of decorum, you may be done in by your friend’s pages. Diligent monitoring

of potential public gaffes – even if it takes a few hours of your life every few

weeks – is certainly well worth it for the future of your career.

In the Information Age, it is common for someone to Google you as a quick

background check. It’s unlikely that you will be able to leave no trace on the

Internet so instead it is important that you choose wisely where you post your

information online and to associate with sites that present you in the way you

want. VisualCV is one such online service that allows you to manage your

online presence with public and private versions of your biography and

resume information and combines it with the ability to attach multimedia.