Step One: Decide on a Theme
This step will take some thought. How do you want employers and colleagues to think of you? Try to come up with three interconnected character traits that encapsulate who you want to be professionally. It is OK if this is not who you are yet. It is meant to be your end goal at this point.
Do you want to be “motivational, dynamic and client driven” or “meticulous, professional and straight to the point.” Throw around some ideas. Hash it over with some friends. After a while you will hit on a theme that describes who you want to be.

Step Two: Scrub Your Virtual Identity
This one is pretty straightforward but it will take some time. As someone who grew up in the midst of the information revolution you most likely have a pretty substantial virtual footprint. It is time to look at the entirety of it with a very critical eye. The first step in creating a personal brand is making sure there is nothing out there that will contradict your soon-to-be-decided on theme.

Go through your various profiles and postings on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Pisca, MySpace and any other social media site. Delete anything that could come back to haunt you. You don’t need to wipe them clean- employers want you to have a personality after all. However, if your posts paint the picture of a serial keg-stand artist you may want to change that.

Step Three: Rewrite Your Profiles
Now create a new profile for each of your social media accounts with the thematic statement you created in Step One in mind. Use your three character traits as your tag line in each account. Let this be the first thing anyone searching for you sees. Then back it up. Create a reading list at Amazon that supports your goals and attach it to your profile. Put a quote or two from someone who exemplifies your theme on your page.

At this point you have begun building your brand. Congratulations! But you’re not done yet.

Step Four: Create Your Professional Documents
There are two main items that fit in this category, your resume and your Linkedin profile. Both are vitally important in creating a personal brand. Start with the resume as that will give you some content for the Linkedin profile later. There are numerous tutorials out there for how to write a resume, including some of my own, so I won’t go into detail as to the nuts and bolts.

However I do want to say a few words on how to insert your brand. Go back to your theme from Step One (notice I keep going back up there ~ yes, it is that important!) when your write your objective or profile statement at the top of your resume include the character traits prominently. Then as you fill out the rest of the resume sections be sure to make those traits the driving message of the document. If something doesn’t support those ideas, leave it out, or at least minimize it.

Then upload your resume to a Linkedin account. Be sure to fill out your profile completely. Take advantage of all the apps that the site allows for. Include your Amazon list here. You can’t have too much info up on this site, as long as it supports your new brand.

OK, I’ve done everything you said. Now what?

Now comes the hard part. You have to get involved socially online with people and organizations that you want to be part of your professional life and to whom you want to promote yourself as your newly created brand. This will take time, but a couple years down the road when you have a fully search-able and professional brand associated with your name, future job searching will be that much more productive.

Your online brand is your first impression for people, job leads, or opportunities that might miss you if it’s not everything it could be. And, it’s definitely a piece of the puzzle for those who have met you in person and are looking to find out more. If you don’t think a hiring manager is going to look around online for more information about you before they make the offer, you are seriously misguided. So, what can you do to make sure your online brand identity is a strong recommendation for why someone should hire you?

1. Use every opportunity to establish a presence.

Although LinkedIn is my favorite online networking site, you should also incorporate Twitter, Facebook, Visual CV, and others. (One article says that you should “cybersquat as much social real estate as possible” to both strengthen your online brand and to combat social identity theft.) Make absolutely certain that every site provides a professional profile with dynamic words that describe who you are and what you do.

2. Make sure your photos are professional and consistent.

Attach a head-and-shoulders professional photo to each of your online pages. Having the same photo on all sites will help those who don’t know you recognize you. And please remove the too-personal photos of you with your friends at the party, or you at your political function, or anything else that could cause controversy. If you’re trying to land a job in medical or health care sales, you want potential employers to concentrate on your job skills without anything else getting in the way.

3. Participate.

Join groups and discussions, and try to share something of value to help others. Always keep your brand in mind as you contribute your thoughts and ideas. (It’s not hiding the “real you,” it’s simply keeping a public face that’s separate from your private one. Or, to put it another way…there’s a lot you wouldn’t say in front of your grandmother that you wouldn’t hesitate to say in front of your friends. Think of cyberspace as your grandmother. ) You decide how you want people to see you, and develop a consistent theme. It presents a unified, clear, positive image to the rest of the world that will pay off for you in your career.

Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

Earlier this week there was a major US ruling in the case of Katherine Evans. If you aren’t aware, Katherine Evans was

suspended in 2007 from Pembroke Pines Charter High School after she used her home computer to create a Facebook page titled, “Ms. Sarah Phelps is the worst teacher I’ve ever met.”

Now in college, she has sued the school to have the suspension removed from her permanent record (citing her First Amendment rights). Her principal disagreed and recently filed a motion to dismiss the case.

However, the court ruled against the Principal’s motion, arguing that the Facebook page was constitutionally protected. This means that the lawsuit can move forward.

How This Impacts Your Job Hunt

One Word: Complacency.

We have seen example after example of how your online postings can hurt your job search. In most instances, you will never even know your musings have cost you a job. As a result, you are forced to deal with the frustration of a longer job search without the benefit of finding out what the problem really is.

What concerns me is that this ruling will lead people to believe that they can post whatever they want on Social Networking sites. And while this is true, it can come at an extreme cost to your job hunt.

Let me put it this way. If you were an employer, would you hire Katherine Evans? To put it differently, if there were two final candidates (Katherine Evans and Jane Doe), both with identical qualifications, who would you choose? My guess is that Jane Doe would get the job. Hiring Katherine would add extra risk for the employer. In this case, they would most likely be wondering:

1. What will she post online about me? The company? Her co-workers?
2. Will she sue me if things don’t go her way?

These are risks that no employer wants to deal with and would certainly impact a hiring decision.

Conclusion

While you are technically free to post what ever you want on Social Networks, there can be harsh, unintended consequences in doing so. Ultimately, anything you post online can and will be used to evaluate you as a job candidate.

You can’t let decisions like this allow you to drop your guard. You need to be vigilant in protecting your online identity and reputation if you want to land your dream job.

Be mindful of what you post. It could come back to haunt you.

Here’s the video:

For those of you who missed it, fast forward to the 1:00 minute point and watch the monitor that is immediately to (our) left of the interviewee’s head.

Unfortunately, this is a reputation nightmare for Mr Kiely. His accidental viral video has put both his job and his good name in jeopardy. He will probably recover from this, but it will not be an easy process. His name is now inextricably linked with the semi-nude photos of Miranda Kerr.

The moral of this story? Be aware of your surroundings and keep work strictly professional. As a new graduate in an Entry Level Job, you won’t have the track record to fall back on if this happens to you. And if you were to ever get fired for something like this, that lack of experience and shattered reputation would be difficult to overcome.

You see, “The Pony” is apparently a local strip club. This has been a public relations nightmare for the school and its athletic program. I don’t know what will come of it, but I bet it won’t be pretty.

Why bring this to your attention? Because it’s just another example of how things you post on Facebook (and assume are private) can get you (and others) in a lot of trouble.

Be careful of what you post online. You never know who will read it and how it may hurt your cause down the line.

The article itself isn’t important (it’s a VC funding announcement), but it did bring ReputationDefender, a relatively new company, to my attention.

So what is ReputationDefender? It’s a subscription service which can be used to manage and monitor your online identity and reputation. Essentially, you pay a fee and they provide information on your online presence and what people are saying about you. In theory, this should allow you to head off unwanted negative information more quickly.

I can certainly see how this service could be useful to an Entry Level Job hunter. In the era of initial “Google Reference Checks”, knowing what is being said about you online could be critical to whether you land the job or not.

But the question remains, should you pay for this service? My hunch is that, unless you have a wealth of negative information posted about you online, you probably don’t need this service. From an employer’s perspective, most of the “negative” information that is out there is made freely available by the candidate themselves. Simply restricting access to your Facebook posts and Twitter feed can go a long way towards eliminating the types of material that would hurt your job search.

Ultimately, the decision is up to you. There are plenty of pricing options available (from monthly fees to full-year subscriptions). Either way, it certainly couldn’t hurt your cause. The choice is yours.

Ever used a third party to monitor and control your online identity? If so, leave us a comment below. It would be great to know more about your experience.

Recently, he was forced to resign his position on the Liverpool FC board after sending this gem of an email to a fan (in response to the fan’s own critical email):

Bl** me f*** face

Wow.

Now, whenever you type “Tom Hicks Jr.” into a search engine, you get pages of links to this very incident. Not that I’m worried for his personal situation; he is a multimillionaire after all. However, this is not what I would want to be known for.

I wonder what his mother has to say about this…

He recently posted an article called 10 Ways to Get Fired For Building Your Personal Brand and it outlines some of the things that you can do in the process of personal branding which may interfere with your job.

Among the things that you can do to hurt your career:

Putting your personal brand in front of your company’s brand.

…80% of people are tweeting about themselves, not about their company…Companies, by nature, are looking to build their own brand, sometimes through the use of selectively chosen spokespeople who represent the brand and can be quoted within press articles (cited with the brand). When you’re getting more attention than your company, you know something is wrong.

Regardless of whether you are looking for work or already have a job, be careful of how you build your brand. Unless you are independently wealthy, it’s easy to get fired by being negligent.

Among the great advice in this piece…

Collect a list of professional portfolio items that you can share, and post them on the appropriate sites. For example, if you have developed Power Point presentations, load them onto SlideShare.com with your name all over it. If you wrote articles, then publish them on eZineArticles.com. If there are videos of you, put them on YouTube.

I agree completely. It’s best that you take control of your online reputation and shape it before someone else can (either intentionally or unintentionally).

This piece is really worth a read. The author is dead-on talking about how the majority of employers will Google (or Bing!) job candidates. Take this advice and don’t let the Internet get the best of you in your job search!