In the era of web and digitalization, it is more than ever necessary to be worried about the image of ourselves that is shown outside and about one's personal branding: Digital Reputation is one of the fundamental aspects to be considered. Do we really know what Digital Reputation is and how to take care of it?
Digital Reputation: what is it about?
The use of social networks has spread so quickly and become so common to make users forget the real scope of what is published, often posting personal facts or opinions on political or news events.Actually, the content that is published online and the use of social media itself are much more important than we often imagine. Social networks eliminate the “private” dimension of facts and situations and make them public, visible to thousands or millions of users.From an HR perspective, the information published on our social accounts is available to HR Manager, Recruiter or Head Hunter: in practice is visible to our current and future employer.
Digital Reputation is in fact the reputation that everyone builds through their own content published online: posts written by us, or answers to forums and blogs, video and pictures.Everything contributes to create our virtual image, which tells things about who we are, our interests, our lifestyle and our ways of relating with others. As we can learn from this interesting article from HBR on the subject, the concept of reputation should not be confused with personal branding, which is related to something intentional and planned, deliberately linked to individual visibility.
On the other hand, Digital Reputation represents the value of credibility through the filter of what the network can show or tell of us.Now let's imagine that you’re looking for a new job: a good Digital Reputation can really make the difference when it comes to make your curriculum vitae stand out among many others, in a labour context in which Social Recruiting is becoming more and more widespread as an HR strategy.
Here are 5 tips on Digital Reputation and job search that we should always keep in mind:
1) Timely update your social profiles (experiences, interests)
In terms of job search, LinkedIn is certainly the first social network, but Facebook and Twitter are also among the common channels used by recruiters to find interesting profiles: it is essential that your profile is always up to date and that it contains all the experiences and acquired skills, to highlight to recruiters your real potential. It is also advisable to follow company pages you’re interested into, as well as content and groups that are relevant to your professional area or interests that you care the most. Valuable content means valuable candidates. What a better business card than a nice profile, which highlights your strengths and creativity to a recruiter?
2) Take care of your privacy (yesterday and today)
What appears on social media is difficult to erase. You always have to keep it in mind and appropriately separate your "private" profiles with playful nicknames, from professional profiles, perhaps with your full name as a username: it is important to distinguish between private life, made up of personal relationships and friendship in a family context, and "public" life, made up of contents which are consciously shown and filtered out. Let us also remember that your online traces remains over time: you should avoid leaving on the network any content from the past that could be misinterpreted or have a negative impact on your current reputation.
3) Avoid hater-behavior
Your professionalism is also measured by relations with the outside world, both in presence and behind a screen: it is important to use an appropriate and respectful language, while maintaining a courteous tone even in virtual responses. There is no space for verbal violence nor for discriminatory comments related to gender, race or religion. Swearing about the queue at the post office could go unnoticed, but online there is no possibility of hiding it for long: it would be a serious blow to Digital Reputation, as well as likely costing you to be excluded from a job selection.
4) Avoid vulgar or inappropriate content
Same as above: your content has to be in line with your ethics. Credibility and reliability go through the publication of adequate messages, avoiding vulgarity, inappropriate images or contents. Digital Reputation is built up by putting together every type of digital material that concerns us: phrases, posts, responses to forums, images, videos ... all these have to be appropriate and consistent with what is expected from an adult and responsible person, which is what a recruiter is looking for in a potential candidate.
5) Be honest
The fifth piece of advice, last but not least, is fairness: you don't need to invent an image of yourself that is far from true to better appear or to look more interesting, but simply pay attention to how much and what to reveal about yourself. Inventing fake interests or unusual hobbies to arouse curiosity would only worsen your Digital Reputation once the truth will be discovered. In fact, the web world hides a thousand pitfalls: it is useless to show how much you love the vegan diet and then be tagged by a dear friend eating some fish, as it happened to a popular social media influencer. Honesty always pays. Especially in job search.
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