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Online Nicknames Google better than Real?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the never-really-thought-about-that dept.

An anonymous reader writes "I was recently laid off, and during several of the interviews looking for a new job as a mid level IT manager, I was asked "So, I can just Google your name and find some of your work?" The answer is "yes", but searching for my name doesn't really bring up many results compared to searching for my online nickname which I have been using for about a decade. I am very tempted just to put that nickname on my resume. Is the professional, albeit technical, world ready for this step? Where should I put it? At the top or somewhere in the body?" And the other problem- how hard will it be to get a job when your nickname is something ridiculous. Boy I wish I would have thought of that in 95 ;)

6 of 308 comments (clear)

  1. Re:They followed my email address by Misanthropy · · Score: 2, Informative

    This is the reason I use separate business and personal emails.

  2. Re:just like any other alias by petes_PoV · · Score: 4, Informative
    relatively standard practice?

    Absolutley not. I interview a *lot* of people and I have never seen a CV (resume) that lists any nicknames, alter-egos, aliases or anything that would point to the candidate having any kind of online presence. It woud probably count against them if they thought this was important.

    I certainly would never follow up any links to online data in a CV.

    A lot of countries have anti-discrimination laws. You would be on very sticky ground if you rejected a candidate on the grounds of information you had gleaned online (esp. if it was related to a class of discrimination). For instance if someone's online diary said "I plan to start a family in a year or two" You could not ask this type of question in an interview and if you rejected them by knowing that this was their intention you could end up being sued.

    BTW, I'm assuming UK law here.

    --
    politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
  3. ClaimID by SocializedSoftware · · Score: 4, Informative

    I use ClaimID to verify what belongs to me online. It's free and let's you add those things online that you authored and also note which items don't belong to you. You can then give your ClaimID URL and annotate your claimed URLs to create an online resume that presents yourself in a more polished way to a potential employer.

  4. Re:Early usenet is a killer by Chapter80 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Also, doing drugs won't stop you from being President these days, saying the wrong thing 20 years ago will.
    Yeah, and funny thing, Slashdot-savvy college kids are willingly handing over their college term papers to services that archive them FOREVER, and without protest. You guys should be expressing outrage at this, like those high school kids in McLean Virginia who go to trial in January!
  5. Searching names on google & similar sites by djh101010 · · Score: 4, Informative

    But on a more serious note, wouldn't it be great if one of the search engines finally did the firstname, lastname thing correctly? It can't be that difficult to figure that one out in a way that it is correct most of the time. You mean, like searching for "Firstname Lastname" (with the quotes)? Works for me... There's nothing magic about that phrase being a name, it's just two words that you want to look for in a specific order but together. Works just like "SCSI bus adapter" or anything else. Just tested with my dad's name, someone with limited web presence. Just with Firstname Lastname, 295,000 hits. With quotes, 90, most of them him, mostly webpages and newsletters from groups he belongs to. So it seems to work pretty well that way. Very useful in genealogy searches, by the way.
  6. How to edit Wikipedia despite conflict of interest by tepples · · Score: 2, Informative

    When you get your own entry on wikipedia and it looks good (because you do work on OSS projects and other items) it launches you to the front of the Resume pool. There's a right way and a suspicious way to post an article about yourself. The suspicious way is by creating the article directly in article space. The right way is as described in a section of the COI page:
    1. Find a WikiProject related to your field.
    2. Become active in this WikiProject for a few weeks, so that your account does not appear to be a single purpose account.
    3. Create the article in your user space, with the majority of the references that you cite being reliable sources that you do not control.
    4. In the WikiProject's talk page, link to the talk page.