When my position was eliminated in February I Googled myself, because outplacement firms and career counselors all say that you want to know what references are on the web about yourself. Fair enough. There are two reasons for this (and, no, narcissism is not one of them): one, you want to be sure there is no negative or erroneous information posted about yourself and, two, you want to be “findable” (via positive references).
I was dismayed when I had to wade though the first six to eight pages of Google results before finding any reference to myself. I think that singular reference was to my LinkedIn profile, as that was about my only web presence at the time.
In the wake of this realization I set out to raise my internet profile and make myself “findable” on Google. My goal was to show up in the first page or two when someone searched for “Chris Bigelow”. How did I go about doing this? I started learning about Social Media and:
- created a Twitter account and started tweeting (http://twitter.com)
- created a Facebook account, added friends and family, and started posting (http://www.facebook.com)
- created a Google profile (http://www.google.com/profiles)
- created a WordPress blog (http://wordpress.com)
- bought my domain name (http://www.chris-bigelow.com) and pointed it at my WordPress blog
- created a VisualCV (http://www.visualcv.com)
I also made it a point to cross reference all of my sites to each other using links.
How did it work out? Well, I just now Googled “Chris Bigelow” and found my blog (fifth and sixth entries) and Google profile (“eleventh” entry/footer) on the first page of the search results. On the second page I found my Twitter account (second entry) and a directory of all “Chris Bigelows” on LinkedIn (fifth entry) where, incidentally, I show up as the second directory entry. That’s five times in the first two pages of results. Much better than my previous showing.
“Fine,” you say. “So where is this all going?” Over the course of my job search I have been contacted by numerous recruiters (both internal and external). They have found me in a variety of ways on line: LinkedIn, Monster, Lynxster and CareerBuilder.
Last week, though, I experienced a first when I was contacted by a corporate recruiter who found me via Google. And not by searching for “Chris Bigelow”, which was my original expectation behind increasing my web presence. This recruiter found me by submitting a Boolean search string of attributes desired for a specific open position at that company. I have to admit that it had never occurred to me that I could be found that way. Needless to say I was pleasantly surprised. Later that evening, as a test, I entered the Boolean search string “engineer AND lean AND ‘powder coat’” into Google and didn’t I show up as the second and sixth entries on the first page of results. Wow! Powerful stuff. The next day I was discussing this incident with a friend who is an independent recruiter and he said that the best, cutting-edge recruiters are now employing this technique.
In the fourteen years I spent at my last employer, the internet went from nascency to ubiquity and job search has changed dramatically because of it.
Have you Googled yourself lately?
Addendum, 28 August: This post has received a lot of comments, mostly on the LinkedIn groups where I posted a link to it. While the feedback has been generally positive, I have had some cautionary feedback as well which I want to share.
As is true anywhere on the internet, you need to exercise caution when sharing personal information. Since this runs counter to the whole concept of social media it creates an extremely delicate balancing act. Making too much information public places you at an increased risk of ID theft, common burglary, and more; making too little information available reduces a potential employer’s ability to find you.
While the choice of how much information to share is strictly a personal one, I recommend that you do not share your home address or phone number. You might take this a step further and list your location as simply the nearest metro area. At the risk of stating the obvious, certainly don’t share your date of birth or social security number. And by all means, don’t broadcast travel plans (“Hello – Mr. Burglar? We’ll be in Cancun the week of January 7th…”).
Best of luck raising your visibility, but remember to be safe.
Chris Bigelow 
Hey, distant cousin, you come up more and more regularly on my Google Alert I have set for myself.