Online Reputation Hurting Your Career?

Online Reputation Hurting Your Career?

Is there anything more valuable than your career, especially in a day and age where the economy can force your client to terminate you on a moment's notice?

With that question in mind, what are you doing in 2015 to make sure that your online reputation does not either cost you a client or your current position? If you have not given much thought to either of those scenarios, time is wasting.

Check Those Online Footprints

As too many professionals find out over time, all they truly needed to do was to have paid a little more attention to their online footprints, making sure they did not step in areas that could hurt them.

According to a 2011 report from the Society for Human Resource Management, close to 75 percent of employers who screen applicants' social media sites refuse to offer potential employees the opportunity "to explain questionable information." In the event you fall into that group then or going forward, you could miss out on a possible dream client due to something questionable you posted online.

So, what if you have been lax up to this point when it comes to retracing your online footprints? Is there still time to correct such inaction? Actually, there is.

In order to lessen the potential fallout from such footprints, consider:

* Imagery - Whether you posted to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or elsewhere, have you gone online in recent or past times with any questionable images of you or others? A picture of you drunk at a party may seem innocent enough to you and your friends, but a potential employer could view it as you having lax judgment.

As a result, he or she never even picks up the phone to call you for an interview, moving on to the next candidate. The photo could also be of someone else, but you were the one who posted it, again calling into question your judgmental skills;

* Comments - Have you taken to social media sites or your own blog to criticize perhaps a former employer or co-worker? If so, such comments could negate you from ever walking in the door of an employer for an interview. Again, your judgment for posting such a comment will be called into question. Unfortunately, some people do not know how to leave the past in the past, deciding to rip a former employer or coworker that they feel wronged them. When they do this, the comment is there for the entire Internet world to see. If you have such hostilities towards someone you worked with, by all means don't leave on the web, an action that could come back to haunt you.

According to "3 Top Social Sharing Trends You Need to Know," people increasingly like to share their opinions online during events, like the Super Bowl. While that may be fun, just be careful about getting too caught up in the moment.

* Legalities - Have you gone through a divorce, nasty legal matter, or some other period in your life where information went public about you? If so, those details could find their way to a prospect's computer. He or she might find out that you filed for bankruptcy for example, with you now trying to get work handling the company's financial matters.

Stop and think for a moment, would you hire someone who had problems handling money in their personal or professional past for such a job? By either initiating on your own or through a company that looks for such online information, you can know what is being said about you on the web before the company you want to work for does.

If you invest the time to truly know what your online background says about you, you stand a much better chance of leaving footprints that will not come back to haunt you.