Google is Your Resume

In Chapter 2 of "What Color Is Your Parachute? 2016" by Richard Bolles you learn about how everything you put online becomes permanent and your potential employers will find it and they will look at it. It is so common for teenagers and young adults to post stuff on social media without thinking. Everyone seems to have pictures of themselves, in a shall we say not so great state of mind, plastered all over their Facebook pages or Instagram's. People tweet without thinking about what they are saying and this can be just as dangerous as posting an inappropriate photo on the internet. When you are young you do not think that one day you'll need to get a job and your potential employer will be looking at everything you've posted online. However, we have all come to learn that unfortunately as much as you may not like your part time job you cannot go posting about it online. Or as much as you want to post all those pictures from that crazy frat party you went to, you're better off saving those for yourself to look back on and laugh at. Employers do not want to hire some wild child that does not have a filter and may talk bad about their company. Of course the book is not saying that you don't post anything on the internet but rather to be careful with what you put up.

What this book suggests is creating pages where you can show off your successes and all the good you do. The most obvious website that you can do this on is LinkedIn. With LinkedIn you want to make sure you are presenting your best self. The book says to make sure that your LinkedIn page is accurate and that you fill in as much detail as you can. No employer wants to go through a boring list of your responsibilities. They want to see what you can do and how you can apply all those lessons you learned in school to the real world. Another suggestion the author provides is to edit anything you have on the internet. Don't take down your social media sites when you are job searching, instead, change your profiles to represent you in the best way possible. If you are a strong writer and enjoy volunteering make sure that all your social media sites show that side of you. You can change the way Google sees you and thus the way your employer will see you. Obviously, you do not want to lie to your potential new employer because that will be evident the minute they meet you. Employers understand that you are human and you like to go out every now and then and have fun and talk about your opinions, but if thats all you're showing online then your employer will only see you in that way. 

This image is from an article on CNN that talked about how college students were changing their names on Facebook in hopes that while job hunting their employers wouldn't see their pages. 

Picture Citation

Goldberg, Stephanie. "Young Job-seekers Hiding Their Facebook Pages." CNN. Cable News Network, 29 Mar.2010. Web.16 Sept. 2015. http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/03/29/facebook.job-seekers