Slashdot Mirror
Online Nicknames Google better than Real?
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 ;)
Personally, I dislike the fact that a person could search some of my online names and figure out quite a bit about 'me'. Early in the 'net years, I decided to have a name that was pretty unique. These days I actually regret it. Now I change my persona now and then.
Clearly you should sue google for damages ;-)
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.
I am very tempted just to put that nickname on my resume. Is the professional, albeit technical, world ready for this step?
The professional world can't stand when your real life and their little toy world-of-whoredom intersect in messy ways. When this happens, you hear about people fired for sexual harassment over a coworker uninvitedly reading your personal website or blog.
So, where should you list your online handle(s) on your resume? Nowhere! Thus the whole point of using a handle in the first place... Only an idiot would pretend it gives us true anonymity, but to a casual search for info on you, the two worlds will maintain some degree of separation. You want that effect.
Remember that once you make it to an actual interview, employers don't look for reasons to hire you, they look for reasons not to hire you. Think of it like a driving test where you start with 100 and can only go down... The less you do outside the scope of the test, the better. At your driving exam, did you ask to stop at the local head-shop to pick up some filters?
If you really feel the need to provide some online persona for an employer, make a new one. Create a cute little profile on all the big social networking sites, and post carefully censored historical details of your life.
Back in the early 90s usenet was "safe" because everyone knew that it got expired after a week or two. We all used our real names and email addresses too. Then someone found some old backup tapes 10 years later and handed them over to Google.
A friend of mine was quite a good troll back then, but now it haunts him due to his unique name. He's written Google and gotten them to delete his posts, but they won't delete other people's posts that quote him, so he's a bit screwed. I advised him to start posting lots of technical stuff to hopefully flood out the bad crap, and then write off the rest as youthful indiscretion.
Another friend who is now in his 40s got busted and convicted for dealing drugs when he was a teenager and spent a few years in jail. He's absolutely reformed now and eventually got a pardon from the governor of the state he was convicted in. He has no trouble getting a tech job these days -- except for banks. He doesn't even bother applying there.
Also, doing drugs won't stop you from being President these days, saying the wrong thing 20 years ago will.
Moral of the story, do drugs, don't talk shit on the net.
(Gawd, this tongue-in-cheek post is going to come back to haunt me someday I bet...)
Me too. I have a dozen email addresses, and they all filter down into the same gmail account.
Want to employ me? email@myrealname.com
Know me on the net? email@onlinename.net
Interested in a project I've worked on? email@projectname.com
I think this is one of the advantages of owning a few domains and having a catch-all. My email address is whatever I want it to be @domain.com. So maybe for myspace, I would use myspace@celardore.net, facebook facebook@celardore.net, etc etc. At least I can look at the headers and see which one of my registrations has sold my email address.
It's not much, but domain owning with a catchall really does help me choose who to ignore.
As an aside, I chose the name Celardore. At the time I chose it because it was unique, and a reference to a movie I enjoyed. Since then, it became quite easy to google "celardore" and find out what I was upto online. Now I use a load of pseudonymns, but I revert to Celardore when I want to say something I wouldn't mind being linked back to me.
Isn't that a good thing, in a way? Searches for dirt on you get drowned out by these more commonly referenced people.
Wow, a hundred comments in and nobody seems to have posted from the employer side of the table. I'll do that.
;-)
It's quite simple. Put your online nickname--if the Google results are flattering. If they're not, then don't. It's really no different from anything else you'd include on your resume. Left a good job on friendly terms? Put that. Perp-walked out of a job in handcuffs? Leave that out. There's not much nuance here: If someone else shares your nickname, and that guy's a dick, you probably shouldn't put your nickname, lest you be put in the position of having to explain his posts. If you use your nickname in porn discussion forums online, leave it out.
On the other hand, maybe your nick links people to logs of great technical discussions you've participated in, on IRC. Or it links to yourself being helpful on a technical mailing list in your field of specialty, or even just yourself showing interest in your field of specialty. For pete's sake, of course you want your employer to see that. As someone who reads resumes and does interviews, that's extremely valuable information to me. I would check it on Google, and I would be interested in what I found there, and if it was positive, I would be strongly leaning toward you before I even picked up a phone to set up the interview.
--
p.s. god I love having a unique name. Thanks to my name and many years of contributions to some high-profile open source stuff, you literally have to go 15 pages deep into Google's results for my name, before you find even a single entry that's not legitimately about me. If I ever have to find another job, I can guarantee you I'll be telling people to Google me.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Conforting thought, but last I checked it's the socially AND mentally adept that rule the world.
Anyone capable of filling a livejournal page with enough quality content to make it look and read in a believable manner is likely talented and hardworking enough that the content might as well be real. Seriously, do you think that the kind of average loser that points to a fake livejoural page is going to be capable of filling it with enough plausible content to get away with it? No, it's going to be filled with thinly veiled "I am so awesome" posts, with "yes, you are so awesome" comments from his three sock puppets.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Plus, I suspect it's kinda hard to fake dates in there, so you'd have to plan for this years in advance. Whatever job is worth that, I want it.
What?
Collect your online work into your own portfolio and put that online (with the URL on your resume). That way many employers will see your work without all the crap that might show up in a Google search. If they want to Google you anyway then they will and you can't control that, but putting your best work forward might satisfy their curiosity or at least draw a line between what you're serious about and what you've put on the web as part of your personal life. If you give your employer enough information to get a good picture of you, they likely won't look much further. And a portfolio gives you control over what they'll see.
That works alright, except for all the pages it is missing. What about pages where they have your initials rather than your full first name? Or pages with middle initials vs. without? Or maybe you are searching for a list, and the format is actually "Lastname, Firstname".
For added bonus, a people search mode could expand semantic information. For example, if there is a page with the text "Firstname Lastname (somebody@google.com)", the search engine know knows one of the email addresses of that person, and can include it in the search, so you find pages with only the email address rather than the name. Or if there is a personal home page on slashdot (or facebook etc.), which lists both real name and handle, all slashdot postings (facebook entries etc) should be included.
You can do this kind of stuff manually today, but it takes a lot of time and effort.
Oh, and before somebody complains about privacy: this is all very public info already. Somebody who knows what they are doing can already collect that data in a hour or two.
"Google" is the verb, "Online Nicknames" is the subject, "Real [Nicknames]" is being compared to it. Every word should have been capitalized since it's a title.
Because doing it yourself is Better.
I want my Cowboyneal