Seriously, how long has it been since you checked out your own – or your company’s – online footprint?
As a job-seeker, you want to be sure recruiters and prospective employers don’t run into photos, rants, re-posts, tweets or any online content that brings questions, raised eyebrows or second thoughts. Making your personal content – such as your Facebook wall – private is an excellent way to ensure your online life doesn’t sabotage your job search. What’s more, if you’re on LinkedIn, a professional photo and good, up-to-date and error-free content will give recruiters a positive online cache of information about you – a cache that may enhance your chances of landing an interview and, maybe, the job you want.
It’s been a while since I posted about good online practices for job-seekers here on the blog. A new article on the SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management) website offers an excellent review of the basics. I highly recommend a quick read of the full article, The Basics of Online Personal Reputation Management. While some parts of the article may not apply to those of us working in escrow and title and mortgage, I suspect that most of us will find more than we’d like to find that applies quite well. The article offers us an easy guide to a periodic “audit” of our searchable online footprint.
As a real estate industry employer looking to hire, do you know what potential employees find when they google your company? Google it and you’ll know! At A Team, we often hear from job seekers who have already checked out our Yelp reviews, our website, our profiles on job boards, and our LinkedIn company page. What do the online review sites, like Glassdoor and Yelp have to say about working at your company? We recommend googling your company name with “employee reviews” in the same search term, as a first pass. If you don’t run across any reviews in that first pass, go directly to the most common employer review sites, Glassdoor and Yelp, and quickly search for your firm.
Here, like a good, positive LinkedIn profile for job searchers, thinking positively and proactively can help you create the company foot print you want researching googlers to find. Let current employees know you have a profile online, on job boards, or on Glassdoor or Yelp, and invite them to leave their honest feedback for prospective employees and job seekers. Create a page on your website describing your company’s culture, its benefits, the values you work by, and fun and rewarding activities you offer employees. We’ve heard of many hiring managers googling job candidates’ names as they review resumes, curious about what they might find. That googling works both ways. To ensure the best and brightest industry candidates leave a Google search with a positive impression of your company and your open position, keep a steady eye on what you and others are saying online about your work environment.