Читать книгу Reinventing You - Dorie Clark - Страница 17

Review everything, because companies like Social Intelligence will. They report that less than a third of the content they dredge up comes from major sites like Facebook or Twitter. Instead, they trawl lesser-known spaces, where it may feel “safer” to post—and lead candidates to mistakes. Comments on old blog posts, bulletin boards, Craigslist ads, or old Yahoo! Groups archives are all targets, not to mention photos and videos (which may have been uploaded by friends with poorer judgment than your own).

In addition to your first pass, you may want to have someone else review the data as well. Everyone knows a picture of you with a bong is probably ill advised. But some people might feel that membership in a “This Is America—I Shouldn’t Have to Press 1 for English” Facebook group is witty, while others could see it as racist. (Yes, that was a real case vetted by Social Intelligence.) Getting another perspective can help you discover blind spots and areas where your idea of “just a joke” could be badly misinterpreted.

Try This

 Search for yourself not just on Google, but also on other search engines such as Bing and membership sites (that may have various privacy settings) like Facebook.

 Search for your name in quotation marks—as in “Dorie Clark”—so you’ll only find hits with that exact phrase. (Otherwise, you may turn up any document, however long, that happens to have both words in it.) Don’t forget to search for variations of your name, including common misspellings or nicknames.

 Don’t give up too soon. Scroll through every page, because you may find a smoking gun on page twenty-six of your Google search. If something malicious, false, or inappropriate is out there, someone’s going to find it eventually, and for your sake, it better be you.