Thursday, August 05, 2010

Remember — the Internet never forgets "The Internet makes everyone a public figure"

RT @mediamentor:
Remember — the Internet never forgets
http://ow.ly/2lhuV
3/4 of US recruiters & HR pros do online searches on potential employees.

"The Internet makes everyone a public figure,"

[excerpt]

A recent survey by Microsoft, for instance, finds fully three-quarters of American recruiters and human resources professionals perform online searches into the activities of potential employees.

Photograph by: Les Bazso, PNG files

Most people have learned — some the hard way — that the Internet's memory makes elephants look forgetful by comparison, with the skeletons in our online closets having bones so sharp as to impale careers, marriages and certainly reputations.

Almost overnight, these challenges have given rise to an entire cottage industry of businesses that manage people's Internet images for them. There are even cyber scholars that foresee a time, not far from now, in which "reputation brokers" will aggregate our e-activities into an annual score that gauges our value as employees, friends and life partners.

Think credit reports, but for morals instead of money.

"The Internet makes everyone a public figure," says Michael Fertik, CEO of the online image management firm ReputationDefender, of which an estimated 97 per cent of clients are ordinary citizens.

"Even if you don't put a lot of stuff about yourself online, someone else is doing it for you . . . So you either do something about it, or learn to live with it."

more at
http://ow.ly/2lhuV