@spicedawg56 It is! Yet remember email is a social network. @Collectual these folks own social media budgets: LIST http://bit.ly/cgtcJs in reply to spicedawg56 1 week ago
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Matrix: Building and Managing Your Online Career Reputation (Unvarnished, LinkedIn, Blogs, and More)

Categories: Social MediaPosted on April 20th, 2010
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In the digital world, expect your clients, new boss, and recruiters to review your online footprint.  In fact, a Microsoft study “showed that 70 percent of hiring managers have rejected candidates because of what they found on line. It’s not all bad news, though. 85 percent said they were influenced by positive online information.”  With stats like this, it’s important you develop a strategy.

As more social tools appear, you are losing control over your online reputation
Recently, I was briefed by the very controversial Unvarnished (in beta), a website where people you’ve worked with can leave anonymous comments about working with you, both good –and bad. After my discussion with the CEO and co-founder, I learned that Unvarnished has a series of checks and balances, such as: FB connect to verify IDs, human vetting of those IDs, and the a series of programs that helps to identify if someone is coming in and trolling, or actually giving fair reviews to a variety of folks. One of the interesting features was that the tool would look for reciprocation of reviews, as those that come in and review others without getting reviewed themselves would be valued less.  Despite the checks and balances, the power has shifted away from you –and to those of your peers.

Develop a strategy to build and manage your online career reputation
Despite the well thought through checks and balances, Unvarnished and other online reputation tools everyone should be conscious of how their online reputation will impact their client work, future jobs, and ultimately your bank account. We’ve seen a variety of technologies emerge for commercial reputation like Amazon rankings, eBay account, to Rapleaf. Yet to best understand how to use the different tools at your disposal for your personal career, I’ve created this handy matrix which you can use to take advantage and minimize risks.

Matrix: Building and Managing Your Online Career Reputation

Tools Control Rating and Example Opportunities Risks What no one tells you
Online Footprint You have a high degree of control. All the things you do online that are discoverable: persona blog, social media accounts (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter). Demonstrate your knowledge of your craft through thought leadership, and show how well you work with others Personal and off topic content could be misconstrued or even used against you. Those embarrassing college photos on frat row may come back to haunt you. Be proactive and develop a personal blog and own your SEO over your name –before someone else does.
Reference Submissions You have a moderate degree of control. That third page on your resume that you submit to hiring manager and recruiters. Chances are, these are solid references you’ve worked with the past that will vouch for you over the phone or in writing Not fully believable, since these were vetted, coached and pre selected This is really used for confirmation that you’ve worked there. Savvy recruiters are able to find out areas of weakness, so work with your references in advance to align on where you should improve.
LinkedIn References You have a high degree of control. Vetted references on your LinkedIn profile It’s always great to have confirmation that you’ve worked with others, and see where you’re really strong Believable, but filtered by you, so for many recruiters and hiring folks this is confirmation –not an unbiased review. Careful here, this can quickly become quid pro quo, and you should be selective of who gives your references. Do this too much and you’ll look like a suck up.  I’ve limited my usage of doing it.
Unvarnished References You have a low degree of control. This controversial new site uses FB connect to verify identity but allows people to give unbiased anonymous reviews of your work. Finally, an platform for unbiased reviews, people can say what they really want about your strengths and weaknesses. Negative information will surface about you, and the more successful you are, the more likely this is to happen Unvarnished has a series of checks and balances setup to ensure reviewers are real people and have experience working with others.
Google You have a variable degree of control. Google owns reputations, and what surfaces on the top few pages on your name are key. News articles, blog posts, and wikipedia pages that discuss you will score high. Recruiters will certainly seek to find out about you, and the chance to score high with positive content are high. If someone has trashed you online expect it to surface. Lack of control of what can surface. Develop an online personal brand strategy to ensure your top results are clean. In the worst case scenario consider a name change or hire a reputation firm to help, I’m sure they’ll leave comments below.

Build a Career Strategy Around Your Online Reputation
Don’t idly stand by  for someone else to own your online reputation develop a strategy now.

  • Be proactive, you’re responsible for your own reputation. Change your mindset, you must be managing your online reputation if you choose not to participate.  Setup Google Alerts for your own namesake and that of your family members.  Recognize that there’s an incredible amount of your ‘private’ information already available through Zabasearch (which gleans public records you’ve used from mortgages, loans, and magazine subscriptions), combined with Google Maps of your home layout, and Zillow to find home value, an incredible amount of information is already out there.  For best results, use the matrix above to decide which toolset will best be used for your strategy.
  • Develop an online career strategy –be decisive.  Every time you press a keyboard key  you’re leaving a digital snail trail online.  Recognize that every online and social interaction you make is forever leaving a mark online.  Those that do so in public forums may be haunted for years or as long as the internet is available.  Be sure to educate the millennials on the impacts that their online antics have to their future careers –likely they have no idea of the ramifications as they can’t see beyond next weekend.
  • Develop tactics to minimize risk. No doubt those that climb the corporate ladder step on a few toes to get there, and those that want to develop a career or personal brand will act outlandish on occasion to get attention.  With those opportunities come risk, and those that are aggressive online will certainly have detractors.  Develop PR skills that professionals have, understand the basics of SEO, own your own namesake domain, and continue to publish on a blog for greatest results.   Those in reputation slump will likely look at online tools that defend reputations or try to clean up past mistakes, those in more dire situations will change their name.

I hope this was helpful, both to corporate web strategists, but to all professionals.  Please leave your tips below in the comments.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 20th, 2010 at 6:39 am and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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  • Brad
    The results that appear when recruiters and hiring managers search for your name online may determine whether or not you get called in for an interview, and when you leave a positive impression, you open up many doors of opportunity. A poor reputation, despite great credentials, is enough to close doors and alienate others.
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  • Great posts and where you said that most recruiter see your online reputation before hiring you, well thats true in most cases as when we hire anyone on senior posts.

    i have not much idea about other niche but any SEO firm will surely search for online presence of the person to whom they are going to hire.....

    having online reputation has both positive and negative effects, sometimes your old mates can bring something bad which is not good to be published about you......but as you said that take care of your name before any other does bad about your name on internet......I think profiles on famous social media and having your own blogs is good thing that you should rank at least top 10 on your own brand name or your own name...

  • Not only is it important to establish your online presence, you must monitor and maintain your online reputation. Prospects check you out online before contacting you. Recruiters seek out ideal candidates through online sources - LinkedIn, Google, etc.

    Define a unique personal brand to differentiate you from others with the same or similar names. Set up a Google alert to notify when your name appear on the internet. Think about a potential client or hiring manager who finds an online reference. Can they distinctly identify you from someone else?

    Recruiters are like blood hounds in their online research. If there is incriminating evidence, they will find it. Check out and clean up your online image.

    April M. Williams
    Speaker, Author, Coach
    http://www.cyberlifetutors.com
  • This post actually scares me. While it's probably good for future employers to investigate you to see if they should hire you, but this puts invasion of privacy on a whole new level. And Unvarnished really sounds terrible. I think it would be really mean if you go on there and say bad things about someone. Does this Unvarnished even verify the truth? No. You can say whatever you want there. Next thing we know valuable company information being paraded on the internet. Your post and this article http://sn.im/vlo1t makes me want to hate the internet. I know the internet is a powerful tool. But there has to be limitations.
  • TaylorEllwood
    The best way to manage your online persona is to produce lots of content on a regular basis. It does make a difference. That said, as someone who has two distinct online personas under my own name, I find it even more interesting when there is cross over from one to another. I think unvarnished is a bad idea, but I'm not surprised someone decided to capitalize on it.
  • Dina Miraven
    How can somebody realistically manage their reputation with sites like http://www.dirtyphonebook.com exposing their phone numbers and personal secrets?
  • By making sure good content is ranked higher than bad content. You need to play on the laziness of the searcher. Have the first 3-4 pages result pages of Google be items that speak well of you, through your own blog, press releases, LinkedIN profile, etc.
  • I can't wait to be part of the class action law suit against unvarnished... anonymous reviews just won't work and in doing so unvarnished is taking on the liability for the slander.

    I was brought in to a group to downsize it, from 10 to 6 people. The people I downsized did not like me, but the people left, liked me even less. I had them working 40% harder to compensate. My boss thought I was the cat’s ass, and new I was in an impossible situation, that is why I was on contract. I came in did the deed, and left. I was replaced by a permanent employee who could eventually earn the trust of his co-workers again, and was not the "Bad Guy".

    I know these people would love a forum like this to spray their venom.
  • Dina Miraven
    a) Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects service providers and platforms from immunity. There will be lawsuits and they will fail.

    b) Why is your initial reaction to stifle free speech? Don't I have the right to comment about you or anybody else? Why would you take that right from me?

    c) I see a lot of potential good emerging from Unvarnished/DirtyPhoneBook and other similar sites. We see whistleblowers against governments and big corporations as good things. Why don't we see it the same way against INDIVIDUALS who do bad things?
  • It continues to amaze me how few people really "manage" their online reputation. Coming back from digital conferences, looking up people I've met there, and realizing they don't have much of a presence online always blows me away.

    Perhaps Unvarnished will be their wake up call. That being said, I can't imagine Unvarnished will be long for the world. They'll get lots of media attention on roll out and then once people begin to get anonymously slandered and character-assassinated on the site the lawsuits will start to fly. My gut tells me they'll meet the same fate as the site (whose name escapes me right now) from a few years ago that focused on reviews of college students by college students that ended up shuttering once a few states began lawsuits against them.
  • edjeplanet
    Great post, Jeremiah! I think Adrian Murphy gave you and all readers a great tip. I have a Twitter account, a LinkedIn profile and a part of my publications are somewhere on the web. With my own .tel domain I have more control of my internet presence. If you enter my name in Google most probably you will find my http://edje.tel on position #1. From there I'm able to guide visitors to places on the internet I think are the most relevant. As a consequence, because these references are visited more often, these links will turn up higher in search results.
    Kind regards,
    dr. Edwin van Rooyen
  • Great post Jeremiah! You've covered pretty much every angle worth covering, from monitoring right through to owning your SERM/SEO. I won't comment on the social tool you decided to cover, however I will say that Carri brings up a number of valid points.

    I also wanted to chime in as I stumbled on an interesting comment/question that was left on Daniel Dessinger's blog a few days ago. This was the first time I'd ever seen someone actually come at the "deliberate" use of SEO in a pejorative sense, slamming their use on negative incidents which include the (trademarked) brand in the url.

    Now I know that real-time search is making it somewhat easier to stage a reputation attack, but whenever I hear "legal" thrown into the mix, I can't help but feel that we're taking more than just a few steps back in light of the headway we've made (through continuing dialogue, awareness and informative posts like yours) on building/managing your online reputation the right way.

    Joseph
    @RepuTrack
  • Great post Jeremiah (just found it through FlippinLowdown on Twitter) I wouldn't touch Unvarnished.No real control there. Linkedin - yes.
    The fastest, easiest way to dominate your personal brand online as far as I can see, seems to be with your own dot tel domain (.tel, - not as flexible as .com, but extremely effective for contact information, and easily optimized for page one search results) Blogs etc take a lot of time - this doesn't. I am fairly new to this stuff, but already have top search results for my own name; http://bit.ly/9PCIrW , and a couple of business related sites too.
  • Great post. Thank Carri B for sharing with me. This is a very big a reason to separate your social/private life persona and your work persona. This allows one to have a private life online and a public life that is searchable and tailored to how you wish to present yourself professionally. I have professional and private twitter handles. My Facebook is 100% private, I opened an account for my business if I need to network via Facebook. My LinkedIn is 100% public/work. But I think most of us never think to do this as a strategy but I am sure more and more will as so much of our lives move into the digital realm.
  • Great post, Jeremiah. As always. That said, Unvarnished sounds like the worst idea imaginable. How many of your past peers do you REALLY think were qualified to accurately evaluate your contribution to the company’s goals? I'd guess not very many.

    Most people have tunnel vision and only see the world in ways that impact themselves. A quick look at the current political climate is an excellent indication of that. Hiring managers have to think about what is first and foremost good for the organization, which may never be reflected in the microcosm of peer reviews.

    Moreover, by valuing reviews that suggest reciprocity, Unvarnished is inviting people to game the system. How much stock do you place in recommendations on LinkedIn when you can see that there was a perceived “trade” of positive comments? The mutual admiration may be genuine, but I immediately toss those out as irrelevant.

    This concept is so many flavors of #FAIL, its hard to list them all.

    @CarriBugbee
    Social Profiles: www.CarriBugbee.com
  • Excellent article Jeremiah. The matrix in particular is especially helpful in explaining the basic lay of the land for proactive online reputation management.

    Regarding Unvarnished, from your perspective, what do you think distinguishes the company from others that have come before it, such as Personratings.com or a profession-specific websites like RateMDs.com?

    Rob Frappier
    Community Manager
    ReputationDefender
  • Heh, as I predicted, I knew some reputation solution providers would chime in. Thanks Rob.
  • Do I detect a hint of sarcasm Mr. Owyang? :-)

    Sincerely though, having chatted with the CEO of Unvarnished, what do you think about their chances for lasting success? Thus far, no other person rating website has been able to shake the stigma of being a place for anonymous defamation online. With its checks and balances, do you think Unvarnished will be different than the others?
  • No none at all Mr Rob ;-)

    It just goes to show you are monitoring your own reputation and congrats to that.

    Unvarnished is unique and will get near term traction from media buzz, curiosity, and that folks are going to be strongly drawn to it if they are being reviewed, or want to read reviews of others.

    Count on this however: There will be direct correlation to their success and the number of lawsuits they get over time.
  • Just found your blog. I love the matrix - sage advice!

    Question - If this is an area where you can help: Where can a college student find summer internships - real ones for business majors (in the Chicago area)

    Thank you, Jeff
  • I think one of the points brought out here and often overlooked is the importance of having a personal blog. It goes beyond thought leadership and demonstration of skills to address pure SEO needs. If you Google yourself and most of the first two pages are not yours (profiles, articles, blogs, bios), then there is a problem.
  • Blogs are one of the *best* ways to own the topics you desire (like your name, and career focus) but extremely time consuming and a commitment to start, heh take it from me!
  • Excellent roadmap. Be sure, I will use it at the IE University in order to convince students... I will let you know the results. Thanks! Juan Luis
  • Great job !

    The point is that both individuals and businesses now have to shift their mindset and understand that reputation is not something they can clean anymore but something they have to build from scratch and maintain every day.
  • That's the underlying trend Bertrand, power has shifted to those that are participating.
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