Slashdot Mirror
Repairing / Establishing Online Reputation?
illini1022 writes "I'm currently a senior nearing graduation from college. With studies focusing on power and energy I believe I have set myself up extremely well for post-graduation employment. I have one concern. The top search result on Google for my full name is a blog posting regarding an article about a pedophile that happens to bear the same name as myself. The blog also originates from a city I lived in during one summer (specified on my resume). Upon closer inspection, it would become quickly apparent that the subject in question is not me. The person of interest was in the military, and I have never been. However, I fear this unfortunate coincidence might cost me chances at employment with companies I'm now applying to. I have absolutely no issue with any employer finding anything I've put on the Internet; I have been careful to protect my reputation. My concern is with an employer mistaking me for someone else, and disqualifying me from recruitment. I've attempted to contact the blog owner to no avail. What are my options? Am I overreacting? Should I attempt to set up my own site that would steal the top Google search from this blog posting? I appreciate any insight/advice."
90% of the applicants are going to call to verify that HR got their app. How many are to call to clarify that they are not in fact the pedophile of the same name. If nothing else you know they'll look at your resume after that!
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Submit a story to Slashdot that reads
"Hello, my name is $REALNAME, and I'm currently a senior nearing graduation..."
Go here:
https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox
Buy your name in quotations as Adwords so your own website will appear every time someone searches you out. Keep it up while you job search.
1 in 4 Maine children in struggle with hunger.
Any employer that would disqualify you soley based on blog postings from a Google search is not a place where you want to work.
Reading this, I couldn't help but think what Google uses to do background checks on their potential employees. Does Google Google?
Not necessarily. I have a not-very common name, yet there is one person with a similar name who lived where I was born. My family left there before I could walk, several years before he lived there. He, of course, has a different SSN and is way older than me. He also committed a few crimes when I was 14(and hadn't lived in that state for over a decade).
This occasionally showed up on badly done backgrounds checks when I was younger.
I lost a summer job in college because of this and it was especially annoying as the report had his age and SSN, but the yoink in HR, who couldn't tell the difference between an ID that had "Under 21" stamped on it and someone old enough to run for president, voided my paperwork before talking to my boss. On the plus side, I got paid four weeks for 3 days of work.
On the down side, FSM help me if Homeland Security were to accidently hit page-down when looking up my file.
Few comments on this:
1) The poster is a college graduate, he competes with hundreds of nominal equal qualification
2) the trick is not making it past the interview, the trick is making it to the interview
3) Employers will probably interview less than 10% of the applicants
4) 90% of applications don't make it past initial vetting
5) Initial vetting will contain required skill set, anything extraordinary positive, any potential downside
The latter is huge if you're competing with a crowd. Googling the applicant is part of due diligence now, and, unlike e.g. credit check, leaves no trace and doesn't require permission. Which is why he should really try hard to get this either removed, or if needed, try to play google ranking and move something else to the top. Similarly, I never understand why people need to point out things like "active in boy scouts, NAACP, KKK, AARP, League of Woman Voters, PETA, Knights of Columbus or AUSSC"; the potential for positive recognition is so much less than the potential for conflict, either with the HR person himself due to bias or because the HR person knows his or her work force.
And no, you will never be able to prove that, your "thank you for your application" letter will always have a "decided on a person with qualifications more suitable for the position".
I'm aging rapidly, I bought a new game and had no idea if my machine was good for it.
>>>what they can legally do and what they do do are two different things.
True. I saw an ad in the paper for a local company that was hiring for ~15 different tech, engineer, and programming jobs. I called the phone number and asked how to submit my resume by Email and they said, "Sorry. We're not accepting resumes at this time."
"Oh. But you have this ad in the paper. Aren't you hiring?"
"Yes we're hiring but we're not accepting resumes."
"Why?"
"....."
"Hello?"
"I'm sorry sir but we're not accepting resumes at this time."
"'kay thanks. Goodbye."
(click)
I've heard two reasons for companies doing this. (1) Is to help boost stocks by convincing investors the company is growing, even though it's not actually hiring anybody. (2) To claim they searched for U.S. candidates, could not find any, therefore they need to import cheap labor from China or India. Whichever one it is, it was obvious I wasn't getting the job even though I'm only 30 minutes away from the factory.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Yeah the sounds just great. Now here's the reality I observed while visiting Compaq Corporation in Houston:
- 3 HR ladies, and about 5000 resumes piled on the floor.
- They rapidly read each resume, perhaps 30 seconds each.
- Good resumes were carefully stacked.
- Bad resumes got a giant X marker and tossed into a large trashcan.
Round 2:
- When they were done, they went through the good candidates, maybe 500 total.
- Once again bad candidates got X'd and tossed.
- Eventually after a full afternoon's work, they narrowed it down to around 50 resumes.
There wasn't a deep background investigation or any of that other nonsense. It was just a quick review of qualifications. Google didn't yet exist back then (2000) but if it did, I bet a VERY quick google search for any "redflags" would have been performed during round two, and even the slightest hint of negativity would mean getting an "X" and tossed in the trash.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
And is it just me, or is it common practice that HR in most companies is staffed with the "unfirables" that no other department wanted? Owner's spouse or relatives, owner's ex-spouse with Clauses In The Divorce Papers, owner's golfing buddy who happens to have Pictures Of People Doing Stuff, owner's fling-on-the-side, owner's child-by-fling-on-the-side, etc - that if they had enough technical clue to understand concepts like "name collision" they probably wouldn't be in HR?
Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that the economy started falling apart shortly after HR departments staffed with idiots became the norm?
...or even better: use your middle initial as part of your name on your resume. That will cast some doubt in (most) HR minds about just who they're dealing with it.
I've thought about this, and considered buying my name as an adword once I seriously start job hunting, with a link to my 'official site' and explanations of various other common search results for my name. Especially since I have a relatively uncommon name, and I often post under my real name, there is a lot of stuff out there with my name on it that might freak out weak minded people who are thinking about hiring me. I'm guessing that holding their hands and walking them through the idea that a person's life on the internet has nothing to do with their job performance is going to be a bigger challenge than sifting through all the fake job postings that companies put up so they can hire H1Bs.
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
If the blogger does not clarify which [whatever your name is] he or she is blogging about, the blog post could be potentially slanderous. As someone who has followed anti-paedophile blogs closely, I may be able to help with identifying the blogger who potentially slandered you.
Feel free to contact me at blribbon at fastmail dot fm, with a link to the blog post in question.
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four