Your on-line brand – what does it say?

Like it or not your on-line presence could make the difference between you getting your next job or not.

Think about your on-line brand - including Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, blogs etc. Will your on-line presence paint you in a positive light?

It is now extremely easy to put your views and opinions in the public domain and once they are out there these are available for anyone who wants to find them. There are even aggregator sites now that will crawl the web to compile a full on-line presence report.

I don’t care what anyone says, but most potential employers and recruiters will Google candidates. They are also likely to check the more popular social media sites. They would be mad not to – it could be as valuable (if not more valuable) than a reference check.

If they find a Facebook profile photo of you that they deem inappropriate or find a blog that you author which does not match their views/values that may be the end of the road for you; and no-one will ever tell you that you didn’t get the job due to your Facebook photo or your latest Tweets.

I’m not suggesting that you sterilize all of your on-line activities, but make sure that you have adequate security settings (especially on Facebook) to stop people seeing things that you may not want them to see.

Give it a try – Google yourself right now and see what comes up.

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