Reputation Is Not Dead: Overlooking Indiscretions Is Wishful Thinking

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Michael Arrington recently wrote a post titled “Reputation Is Dead: It’s Time to Overlook Our Indiscretions.” He discusses how it is becoming increasingly more difficult to protect your online reputation these days and says that because of this we’ll have to overlook the questionable content we might see on the internet. Arrington says, “Employers just won’t care that ridiculous drunk college pictures pop up about you when they do an HR background search on you.”

This is wishful thinking at its worst. This would be great, but the reality is that not everyone will have questionable content of themselves on the web and those thinking of hiring will more than likely not ignore those things.

Responsible employers will probably think of how their clients may think of the new hires questionable content. Do you really want to put your funds into a company that hires the girl passed out on the bathroom floor or the guy with eyes rolled back on a couch with bong in hand?

They say don’t judge ...
... a book by its cover, but that is exactly what our society does. Your physical appearance says a lot about you, and once an image is seen it is hard to un-see, if not impossible. So, while someone is shaking your hand, they can’t help but be reminded of what your face looked like when your “friends” posted that image of you with that phallic symbol drawn on your face.

Stephanie Goldberg wrote an article titled, “Young job-seekers hiding their Facebook pages,” which discusses exactly what the title says. While some are either oblivious to the affects that their online content (Facebook profiles, twitter accounts, blogs, etc.) can have on their job search it comes as no surprise to me that “70 percent of recruiters and hiring managers in the United States have rejected an applicant based on information they found online”â€as stated in the article from a survey commissioned by Microsoft.

Word of advice… be aware of the content you put on the internet and be weary of those that say that it’s not a big deal and that nobody pays attention to that. The fact is, that would just be true in a world where people didn’t judge others, but we live on planet earth where judgment is as common as blue sky.