Managing Your Reputation Online: A Primer for CIOs Who Don't Get It
On occasion, CIO.com receives e-mails from IT executives asking us to remove certain blog entries and negative comments about their leadership from the site. These requests demonstrate that IT leaders are beginning to understand the damage the Web and social media can do to their reputations and to their careers. But I'm concerned that with the exception of John Halamka, JP Rangaswami and a few others, CIOs generally aren't doing enough to protect their reputations online. I get the sense that they're just doing damage control and that most don't realize their careers are truly at stake until it's too late.
The fact is online reputation management is critical for executives. "As you climb the corporate ladder and become more visible, the chance of prospective employers Googling you is higher because they're taking more of a risk hiring you," says Dan Schawbel, a personal branding expert and author of the forthcoming book Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success.
Since site owners rarely take down blogs or comments upon request (unless the content violates a site's terms of service or is slander or libel), CIOs can't rely on such appeals to clean up bad press. What's more, even if a site owner does remove a controversial post, the post might still live on in Google's cache.
To help CIOs get more sophisticated about managing their reputations online, I prepared the following three basic tips.
#1: Know what's being said about you.
Sometimes we receive requests from CIOs asking us to take down posts or comments several years after those posts and comments were originally published. This makes me think that these CIOs aren't proactively managing their reputations online, and that they're discovering negative information about them at the worst possible time—possibly during a job search or after a prospective employer brings it to their attention.
When you're prospecting for a new job, you need to know what people are saying about you online, whether they're friends, neighbors, journalists or disgruntled employees. You need to find these skeletons in your virtual closet before prospective employers find them.
If you identify any articles or comments that are remotely negative or controversial, you need to plan how you'll address this information with a prospective employer) in the event it comes up during a job interview. (See 5 Tips for Managing the Messaging About Your Departure from a Company.) You can't afford to get blindsided, especially in this job market.
How can you find out what's being said about you online? Let me count the ways:
You can do vanity searches—that is, you can enter your name into different search engines—to see what comes up. You can set comprehensive Google alerts for your name so that every time your name appears online, whether it's in a blog or news story, you know about it.
My colleague C.G. Lynch says CIOs should watch what's said about them on social networks. A friend or colleague could write something in jest that could be unflattering.
Personal branding expert Schawbel advises people to search for their names on Twitter. "Go to
Print
The fact is online reputation management is critical for executives. "As you climb the corporate ladder and become more visible, the chance of prospective employers Googling you is higher because they're taking more of a risk hiring you," says Dan Schawbel, a personal branding expert and author of the forthcoming book Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success.
Since site owners rarely take down blogs or comments upon request (unless the content violates a site's terms of service or is slander or libel), CIOs can't rely on such appeals to clean up bad press. What's more, even if a site owner does remove a controversial post, the post might still live on in Google's cache.
To help CIOs get more sophisticated about managing their reputations online, I prepared the following three basic tips.
#1: Know what's being said about you.
Sometimes we receive requests from CIOs asking us to take down posts or comments several years after those posts and comments were originally published. This makes me think that these CIOs aren't proactively managing their reputations online, and that they're discovering negative information about them at the worst possible time—possibly during a job search or after a prospective employer brings it to their attention.
When you're prospecting for a new job, you need to know what people are saying about you online, whether they're friends, neighbors, journalists or disgruntled employees. You need to find these skeletons in your virtual closet before prospective employers find them.
If you identify any articles or comments that are remotely negative or controversial, you need to plan how you'll address this information with a prospective employer) in the event it comes up during a job interview. (See 5 Tips for Managing the Messaging About Your Departure from a Company.) You can't afford to get blindsided, especially in this job market.
How can you find out what's being said about you online? Let me count the ways:
You can do vanity searches—that is, you can enter your name into different search engines—to see what comes up. You can set comprehensive Google alerts for your name so that every time your name appears online, whether it's in a blog or news story, you know about it.
My colleague C.G. Lynch says CIOs should watch what's said about them on social networks. A friend or colleague could write something in jest that could be unflattering.
Personal branding expert Schawbel advises people to search for their names on Twitter. "Go to
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