Your Online Writing Life: Protect Your Reputation — and Future (Part One)

Did you know that more and more com­pa­nies are using Google and other online resources to con­duct, in part, back­ground checks on prospec­tive employ­ees? And sto­ries of folks whose employ­ment has been ter­mi­nated as a result of online activ­i­ties are plen­ti­ful. Today I had a dis­pute with an indi­vid­ual who con­tributed a post to the weekly blog car­ni­val I man­age, the Car­ni­val of Fam­ily Life, con­cern­ing my refusal to include his entry because of its content.

All of these fac­tors have inspired me to spend some time in the com­ing weeks exam­in­ing how online writ­ers can best pro­tect their rep­u­ta­tions — and futures.

Recently, I read with bemuse­ment an arti­cle about e-mail addresses at Life and Lawns: What your email address tells me about you on a job appli­ca­tion. Allyn, a mar­ket­ing and sales recruiter, shared some of the email addresses that job seek­ers have pro­vided as a point of con­tact. I chuck­led at the sheer stu­pid­ity of plac­ing an e-mail address such as “screwedup@asdf.com” or “legalizethis@asdf.com” on one’s resume or job appli­ca­tion. Sadly, how­ever, Allyn speaks from experience.

He points out that an email address “makes an impres­sion” and coun­sels read­ers to think care­fully about the address they select. His advise is wise indeed. Busi­ness is trans­acted largely via email these days and the busi­ness of secur­ing or main­tain­ing employ­ment is no excep­tion to that rule. In par­tic­u­lar, most job seek­ers place their e-mail address at the top of their resume, directly beneath their name, street address and tele­phone num­ber, mean­ing that it is going to be observed by the recruiter before he/she reads the accom­plish­ments detailed in the body of the resume. Like­wise, many job appli­ca­tion forms ask for an e-mail address in the top sec­tion of the form, usu­ally right next to the box where your phone num­ber is placed. Again, that infor­ma­tion is going to be visu­ally scanned by the per­son screen­ing appli­ca­tions before he/she reviews the remain­der of the form set­ting forth details about your edu­ca­tional back­ground, work his­tory, awards received and other accomplishments.

In other words, a pro­fes­sional and appro­pri­ate email address con­sti­tutes an oppor­tu­nity to make a favor­able first impres­sion, the impor­tance of which can­not be overstated.

As an online writer, you may not wish to reveal your real first and last name and, there­fore, uti­lize a clever or witty email address as a point of con­tact. How­ever, I urge you to also main­tain a sep­a­rate account for con­duct­ing per­sonal busi­ness, espe­cially when seek­ing employ­ment or deal­ing with your present employer. Your real first and last name is the most eas­ily remem­bered and pro­fes­sional choice. More­over, I urge you to steer away from free domains such as Hot­mail which are known for pro­vid­ing anonymity and being the source of spam. Rather, asso­ciate your busi­ness email address with your Inter­net provider, sub­tly demon­strat­ing your sta­bil­ity, reli­a­bil­ity and seri­ous com­mit­ment to your pro­fes­sional pursuits.

Finally, make sure that if you asso­ciate an auto-responder mes­sage with that account, any mes­sage relayed back to senders is appro­pri­ate for the work­place. When I am on vaca­tion, I set up my Out­look account to respond auto­mat­i­cally to all e-mail, advis­ing the sender that I will not be read­ing e-mail for a spe­cific period of time and pro­vid­ing alter­na­tive con­tact infor­ma­tion in the event that an emer­gency arises which must be dealt with before I return. Obvi­ously, the last thing you want to do is for­get that you sub­mit­ted a resume and/or job appli­ca­tion to a par­tic­u­lar com­pany using that email address and then uti­lize an auto­matic “away” mes­sage of ques­tion­able taste and appropriateness.

By the way, the same advice is applic­a­ble to your cel­lu­lar tele­phone or Black­berry. Employ­ers will use your cel­lu­lar tele­phone num­ber in order to con­tact you to set up an inter­view, for instance. Fre­quently, the cel­lu­lar num­ber is the pre­ferred choice because recruiters real­ize that if you are presently employed, you are not going to be at home to receive their call and they pre­fer not to call you at your present place of employ­ment. So it is advis­able not to have an objec­tion­able greeting.

Recently, my youngest son’s cell phone was either stolen or he lost it. Either way, he did not real­ize that it was miss­ing until I was review­ing the monthly state­ment and noticed a lot of unusual activ­ity on his phone line. Sus­pi­cious, I asked him, “Where’s your phone?” He replied, “In my room.” So I called his num­ber, using the speaker phone on my desk. When, instead of a stan­dard ring tone, a rap song con­tain­ing highly offen­sive lan­guage, includ­ing racial and gen­der epi­thets, began play­ing, we knew that the phone was no longer in his pos­ses­sion or con­trol. You do not want a prospec­tive employer to react with hor­ror, as we did, upon call­ing your number.

Do you have expe­ri­ence with these or related issues? Leave a comment!

Also pub­lished at Write Any­thing.

Tech­no­rati Tags: Col­lo­quium on Writing

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