I received an interesting call today. A prospect rang in and wanted to know if I could fix his reputation. It seems that information online from a previous company was damaging to a current endeavor, and he wanted me to fix it for him by blogging.
It's not what I do, and although it's possible, it did underscore the problem of online reputation. Which is why this post from Jeremiah covering online reputation so interesting.
Two people, Thomas and Simon, have a disagreement. Thomas has a blog - a well-read and high ranking blog. The blogger writes about the disagreement, and calls Simon a name. The story goes onto the net, and quickly, the search engine result pages make a search for the Simon pull up the story. So what does it mean? Here's my comment, but you should read the whole post for a sense of what other people were saying.
The Google SERP results are temporary. We’ve seen this played out many times, and while it currently looks bad, over a period of months, sometimes just weeks or days, many of those results will drop off (as the posts move to archived posts with lesser PageRank).
As a recruiter, and someone who has been warning recruiters and candidates for years about Google search results, I can only say that the results of the study are overstated.
Yes, we do filter candidates from information we find online, but a smear campaign, or a blogstorm, will not permanently damage a candidate’s reputation unless it was something serious.
I’ve seen actual crimes committed that have been swept under the rug with Google results, and while Simon may temporarily be embarrassed, long term it won’t matter that much.
And if it did, he would have a pretty decent lawsuit against Thomas Hawk for interfering with his right to employment. If it could be shown that the negative results were libelous, or intended to harm Simon’s long-term prospects, it would be even stronger, especially as Thomas knows the impact of his actions.
SERP’s are a bit ahead of collective legal mind right now, which is actually a bigger danger, as the actual damage may seem worse than it is.
And let’s not forget the damage down to the Thomas Hawk brand. Clients are terrifed of online mobs as it is. When they see stuff like this, they run for the hills, and they’re much less inclined to work with someone in a public spat.
Pick your battles carefully, people.
The biggest problem for bloggers and social media people in this battle is long-term viability. You simply cannot create a reputation of being a hothead in this business and expect corporations to continue to work with you. You can expect that if I'm representing you, I'll have done a complete search of several search engines, your handles, and other information to show what kind of attitude you have online.
