ResumeBay Blog

Maintaining Your Personal Online Reputation

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 14:29:34 GMT

With Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, and the thousands of blogs roaming the internet these days, one false slip could have your latest screw-up going viral. Politicians have been caught via Twitter, employees have lost jobs because of their Facebook profiles, and families have been torn apart because of a few tactless blog posts. If you are trying to find a job, you need to protect the image that the internet may be conveying about you, and the best way to do that is through online reputation management.
Although Online Reputation Management is generally a strategy used by small and large corporations alike, it is also a great one for individuals interested in seeking a career to employ too. The bottom line is employers will search for you on the internet prior to hiring, and if a photo of you binge drinking or a blog post containing rants of how much you hate your job pops up, you can guarantee they will move on to the next applicant.
To better protect your personal online reputation, take a few lessons from business online reputation management strategies. Companies often protect their image through the following easy management strategies:
Protecting Your Brand…or in this Case, Your Name
Clean up any social networking sites you may be a part of. Don't simply privatize your photos. Many employers have the IT teams and software that can easily bypass these protections. If you want potential employers to think you are a hardworking and respectable person, have your Facebook profile reflect that. Tell your friends to stop posting lewd comments on your wall, and remove any indecent photos. Also be sure to update your information so that beer pong and flip cup still aren't listed under your Favorite Activities.
Increasing Your Visibility
Facebook, Twitter, Blogspot, YouTube, LinkedIn, you name it and you should be on it. Not only will this help you convey that you are a good person regardless of the social media platform employers begin searching for you on, but it will also show that you are able to work with these types of sites easily and on a regular basis. Many companies are seeking individuals who are competent with social networking sites, and are definitely more likely to hire someone who is over someone who isn't.
Building Trust
It may sound a little strange that you should be posting yourself all over every social networking site, but there is another reason for doing so – it helps employers build trust. Not only do they see you conveying the same image across multiple platforms, but they also see that you are not afraid to put yourself out on the web. It shows that you have less to hide, and to an employer it means that you are less likely to be a liability.
The current job market is a rough one, but if you are able to protect your online image while distributing top-quality resumes, you greatly increase your likelihood of obtaining interviews and call backs.

McAfee says ResumeBay is POTENTIALLY Phishing

Wed, 23 May 2007 07:45:07 GMT

When navigating my website today, McAfee reported the following...

McAfee has detected a potential phishing Web site.

Phishing sites appear to be legitimate, but they request you to provide sensitive information, which can be used to commit fraud.

McAfee recommends that you block this Web site.

WTF? Are these guys looking for a lawsuit? This is blatant libel. People have to stand up to McAfee and show them the finger for these false positives.

Embed Your Resume

Fri, 11 May 2007 19:32:26 GMT

You can now embed your ResumeBay resume in other websites like MySpace. Here's my profile. If you look in the About Me, you'll see my resume in full.

http://www.resumebay.net/embed.aspx
http://www.myspace.com/randymorin

Facebook Resume

Thu, 10 May 2007 21:38:57 GMT

You can now import your resume from Facebook. Go here and click the Facebook graphic.

http://www.resumebay.net/import.aspx

RSS Resume

Thu, 03 May 2007 16:26:08 GMT

Yesterday, Douglas Karr left a very challenging comment on Chip' Quips. Basically, Douglas wants to use RSS as an envelop for his resume. Others could subscribe to his resume and get an update whenever his resume changes.

http://www.chipsquips.com/?p=837#comment-43978

Douglas has written before on this subject. He would like to do a tag query on Technorati and find matching resumes.

http://www.douglaskarr.com/2006/12/20/peace-2/

Standards for embedding resumes in RSS already exist. Microformats is the most commonly used format, but you can also simply embed an HR-XML Resume object in your RSS <item>. So, I decided to make this functionality available on ResumeBay. Hack. Hack! And done.

My resume
http://www.resumebay.net/resume.aspx/randymorin
My resume in RSS microformats
http://www.resumebay.net/resume.aspx/randymorin?t=rssmf
My resume with embedded HR-XML
http://www.resumebay.net/resume.aspx/randymorin?t=rss

ResumeBay does Word

Wed, 02 May 2007 03:57:42 GMT

You can now export the resumes you create in ResumeBay into Word format (actually its RTF). Simply go to the homepage while logged-in and you'll see the new alternate view for your resume.

Total DNS Failure

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 20:59:32 GMT

This afternoon, my hosting service took it upon themselves to screw up my DNS settings. They moved my DNS settings to a new name server, deleted them from the old server, then failed to point my name server records to the new server. If you can't get ResumeBay right now, neither can you read this, but if you could, then you'd know why we are AWOL.

Use ResumeBay and Win

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 02:46:19 GMT

I'm already announcing two winners in our contest to get users to give us great feedback. I promised one winner every week, but we got such great feedback the first day, that I'm giving away two prizes.

Richard Pilkington has long been one of ResumeBay's biggest users. He had the largest (in KBs) resume of anyone not associated with ResumeBay. The new editor didn't work with his existing HR-XML resume and this gave us plenty of bugs to fix.
Sterling Camden was one of the original ResumeBay users. In fact, I think we first met when he submitted a bug shortly after ResumeBay first launched. We are now great friends.

Thanks guys. I've already sent Richard a $20 book from Amazon and will be doing the same for Sterling as soon as he tells me what he wants. I've got another $150 to pay out. If you want $20 in Amazon merchandise, then simply use ResumeBay, find a bug or recommend a feature.

Resume Editor

Sat, 28 Apr 2007 21:04:21 GMT

I completely rewrote the Resume Editor. Got big plans. I'm looking for people to try it and tell me what they think. The people that send me the best bug reports, usability thoughts and feature requests will all receive free stuff from Amazon.com. Please take a look!

http://www.resumebay.net/edit.aspx

ResumeBay worth $1,030,494

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 20:02:56 GMT

According to dnScoop, ResumeBay is worth $1,030,494 after only one year of operation.

My Site is worth
$1,030,494

How much is your site worth?