Online reputation is not 9 to 5

• At last week's panel on using social media to find a job, a student asked, "Where's the line between personal and professional?" The panelists suggested that you should show some personality; employers want to see it.
• During her school's spring break this week, Barbara Nixon tweeted that she'd be happy not to see "f-bomb-laden tweets about hangovers etc." and said "I guess some think that professionalism and reputation are a 9-5 thing."
• Also this week, Lauren Fernandez wrote a "Think Before You Tweet" post that said, in part, "Gen Y overshares, but most clients and bosses that you interact with aren't... There is no rule that you must share every detail about your life."

The simple truth is that every single thing you (or your friends) put on the Internet, whether it's on a locked Twitter account, a semi-private Facebook page, or a public blog, reflects on you as a person as well as a potential employee. There is no line between personal and professional. 

Once you post something, you cannot take it back. I have an example of this in my RSS aggregator: I favorited a blog post that the author later deleted because it showed poor professional judgment -- it criticized another agency's client. I still have it. I still show it to students. Once he posted it, even though he deleted it, he can't take it back.

So, that thing you post -- that funny picture, that negative comment about a company, that drunken tweet, that snarky comment about someone else or that thing you meant as a joke -- once you post it, you can't control what other people do with it. If I wanted to, I could link to an example of each and every one of these mistakes recently made by a PR student somewhere in the United States. I'm not that cruel... but other people will be.

Showing your personality is one thing. Showing a lack of judgment is another. 

Comments

[Kristen Escovedo]

Karen,
What a great post. This is information that everyone, not just students, needs to hear. I am constantly amazed by what people continue to put on the Internet.

I've heard it said, "If you wouldn't say it on the 5 o'clock news, then don't put it on the Internet." But I think even that is outdated. Who keeps a copy of the 5 o'clock news forever, unless it's on youtube.

[Karen Russell]

Kristen, you're right -- keyword search changes everything!