Research commissioned by Microsoft in December 2009 found that 79 percent of United States hiring managers and job recruiters surveyed reviewed online information about job applicants.
Most of those surveyed consider what they find online to impact their selection criteria. In fact, 70 percent of United States hiring managers in the study say they have rejected candidates based on what they found.
Review the results of the survey to see how online reputations impact people’s lives. The research comes from interviews with over 1,200 hiring and recruitment managers and 1,200 consumers in the United States, the U.K., Germany and France.
The results of the research reveal what you post on the Internet and what people post about you can affect your professional life.
Monitor your online reputation
First, find out what information is already on the Internet and assess the impression it leaves on people.
Follow these tips to monitor and evaluate your online reputation:
- Search your name. Begin by typing your first and last name into several popular search engines to see where you are mentioned and in what context.
- Focus your search. To get more precise results, put quotation marks around your name, so that the search engine reads your name as a phrase and not as two or more unrelated words that just happen to appear in the text. If you find other people who share your name, you can eliminate many false hits by using keywords. You can add keywords that apply only to you, such as your city, your employer, or a hobby.
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