Internet Presence

My Civil Procedure professor today gave a short speech on internet presence of students. This is the second time we've heard about this from this particular professor, and of course, other professors and the Career Services office have also brought it up.

Self-Googling is always amusing, so I thought I'd Google myself and provide the links.

Googling just my first and last name returns 29,900 sites and photos of a woman much younger than me in a very short skirt, as well as a high school student who appears to be playing soccer. The only slightly disturbing return is another blog could, possibly, be mistaken as mine. But seeing as she seems to write mostly on the contemporary art and gallery scene (and I can't really do anything about it), I'm not too worried.

Adding my middle name returns 20 pages, most of which seem to actually relate to me. The first page of returns, in order:

1)
The Fall 2007 newsletter for Save Ellis Island, where I held an internship

2) My Facebook page, which is not accessible to anyone I'm not connected to. (And, no, there's really nothing incriminating there, I just feel the need for some privacy!)

3) The Institute of Museum Ethics list of Graduate Student Contributors

4) My Master's thesis

5) A silly game I started playing and abandoned

6) My Master's program's MySpace blog, listing all the completed thesis projects for my graduating semester

7) My profile at MuseumProfessionals.org

8) The photos page at the ning site for Professional Women's Network of Southern California

So, why does any of this matter? According to Business Insider [14 Sept. 2008], only 22% of employers vet potential hires by Facebook or Myspace searches. But that's up 11% from 2006. And Market Watch [11 Feb. 2009] put the number closer to 40%.

So this is a quickly growing practice, and as my professor pointed out, you probably don't want a potential employer coming across the picture of you doing your best Michael Phelps impersonation.

I think the thing to remember is that the internet can be a tool or a hindrance. I try to use the internet as personal marketing tool - I have a LinkedIn account and I discuss my personal and professional interests here on this blog. The test, I think, is that you should seriously consider putting something online you wouldn't want your nana (grandmother) to see. Of course, everyone's nana is different, and maybe your nana wants to see things my nana doesn't. What would the "reasonable nana" want to see online?