What is Digg?53 Comments
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+35Luckily, I don't call myself Asshate on job applications.
- wtfdan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+27I remember when a friend of mine went in for his second interview and was turned down. The interviewer said that he was no longer a desirable candidate for employment after viewing his "online persona" on several sites. (The company found his myspace.)
He decided that he would Google the store manager's name and dig up some dirt. Well... he did. He found this guy registered on several pr0n forums and Adult Friend Finder... with some interesting profile data there.
He did what any geek would have done. He compiled the links and proof into a letter and sent it anonymously to the District Manager in our area.
We went back to that store to get a 360 and found out that the manager who interviewed him was "no longer with us." - vbsurfer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15A candidate ddn't get a job because they had a little too much fun in College one night? Well I wouldn't want to work for them anyways...
I guess we can't have a personal life outside of work these days. Sorry...got to go back to work! - whizzbang, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10It depends what time of day you participate.. ;)
- Sushiman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I don't get it... is looking at porn in your own private time wrong and worthy of being fired over? I don't see how something like that can hurt your ability to work.
- interiot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Since companies apparently believe any random information they find online, just photoshop yourself having dinner with some dignitaries, or talk about how happy you are that your business project just got $500 million in financing.
There's a reason it seems unprofessional for companies to use google search results in the interview process. That's because it is. - sciencebase, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I discovered this week that there's a mass murderer in England with my name! Aaaaagh! I'll never get another job! Luckily I'm self-employed and my boss would be really stoopid to sack me.
- hoglund, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9All press is good press! Publish 0-day advisories with flames against your fellow peers! Gain the respect of your fellow crew-members! Give shout-outs to hacker groups in Pakistan, all the while singing the praises of Microsoft secure coding practices! All of these things help you! No-one likes a bore. Drink heavily and post the pictures online after Defcon is over! -- everyone does it -- don't worry -- this Christine Hirsch chick isn't hiring for any postitions you care about! More blood and violence I say!
-G - dpk87, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5What about Max Power?
- JudgeDredd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5*****, I am screwed. Who wants to hire Judge Dredd?
- gyrfalcon, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Whew, I don't have a blog or facebook... I'm safe! :)
- iSamurai, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5The first google result to actually link to ME is my digg profile :)
- sunshinelife, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Some more ideas:
# Spell your name differently. William D.R. Buckley is different from Bill Buckley, William Roger Buckley etc.
Google each and use different spellings with discretion.
# Use your initials when posting online, WDRB - can be attributet when desired but not so easy to find later.
# Use a pseudonyme online, decide on one - today, right now - with email.
# Have a separate annonomous email address, some people will Google your email address directly, especially if you have a common name.
# Be carefull with what you post online! - InternetUser, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5@vbsurfer: Agreed. Although I'm not sure they would tell you the reason they didn't hire you.
- EochaidRiata, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4One thing they left out: old Usenet postings. You can request that they be removed from Google's Usenet archive using the following link.
http://groups.google.com/groups/msgs_remove - willcode4beer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Maybe you could visit forums and answer questions for people (just spend about 20-30 mins a day on it).
Then you can look like a knowledgable mentor.
A large number of posts answering peoples questions could drown out the one or two bad looking ones. As a side beneft, you actually would be helping people, and you might even make some friends and/or get contacts for jobs. - phidong, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5I imagine it could happen a number of ways. Keep in mind they already have quite a bit of information about you since you're applying for the job. It wouldn't be terribly difficult to narrow down the searches using a combination of your name, birth date, the city/state you live in, your e-mail address, phone number, etc.
If they're successful they could potentially find your personal site or a post on a forum or something. From there, they could use your forum username to locate more information about you if you use the same username on different forums/sites.
If they went to the same school and found your facebook and you had information like a screen name on there, they could search that and perhaps find other sites you've used and listed your screen name at.
Just because you don't have a completely unique name doesn't mean you're safe. It just means they'll have to do a little more work to find information about you online. - crawfishsoul, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I wouldn't be so sure of that. There are three Copy Ninja's in my neighborhood alone. The other Copy Ninja's are just better than you at being stealthy.
- gowans007, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I could be in the *****:
http://www.dfgowans.co.uk - d03boy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Uh oh... I wonder if I didn't get an internship I was hoping for because of joephillips.com
I smell a lawsuit. Sometimes it's just unlucky to have the same name as someone else. - matx, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4If only the internet had a delete key!
- InternetUser, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I think I've only posted my real name like 2 or 3 times in the last 10 years of being on the web :)
- Leadhyena, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3This is a non-issue. The lack of verifiability is the hangup. Can you _prove_ that someone's handle is actually connected to a real person without checking ISP logs? Come on. Anyone who uses their real name on Myspace et. al. is too stupid to hold a position at your company anyway.
Furthermore, what's the legality of this? Eventually this will be tested in court, and it shouldn't come to anyone's surprise when they demand that internet activities should not be a factor in any hiring decision. - SpannerX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2To vetipc: I'm going with John Snow.
- MikeHinds, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4They might be concerned about their spelling abilities, and use of the provided spell-checker and Click To Edit links.
- davotoula, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2DOH! ^^^ was faster to type it up
- giraldus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I do worry a little bit about this trend though: the earliest post of mine on usenet was sometimes in 1987 -- just checked with google -- have had the same 'official' email address since about the same time and I had my first web page in 1993.... at a time when Internet was a bit different from what it is today, a different crowd, spam in its infancy, and I was a wee bit younger and idealistic, and thought it was unethical to hide one's identity online (yeah, I know, one does dumb things in his youth); another thing which I find annoying is that a few mailing lists, initially advertised as 'members only', are now archived/searchable on the web -- nothing compromising, technical stuff, but annoying nonetheless (if only because it discloses one's email address to the whole world, spammers included)
- imack, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Searching my username gave hits high up to my digg profile...
Googling my full name gave me almost the whole first page. Luckily nothing incriminating though. - gullevek, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3hehe, my digg profile is also very high on google. Which surprises me, because I am way longer in other site like slashdot ... seems digg has better google-suck-up(tm) compatibility.
- vetipc, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Yeah, definitely change your name. I am thinking about Ford Prefect, does it sound good?
- iSamurai, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3I doubt it, I guess it depends on the forum though
- riverguardian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1That's why there's a thing called claimID, guys. Plain and simple.
- afruff23, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4Would recruiters look down on epople who participate in many forums?
- nanito, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1hahahaha, you're my idol =D
- Philbert, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Some good advice there. I'm pretty careful about what I post online, especially since more and more employers prefer to see a link to my website, instead of me sending them something in the mail. I only blog about my current works in progress and personal news if it's very important. I've got a digg feed on my blog so I'm even careful about what I digg. Some stuff looks cool and I might digg it, but I always have to think about how that looks on my blog page before doing so. I just googled my name and while I'm not at the top of the list, the real me is listed on the first search page.
- Alex2, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Thank you!
- OBKenobi, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2One thing I agree about, recruiters are often not exactly the most wholesome of people. I suggest you avoid them if at all possible, unless you're sure about their reputation.
- CopyNinja, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Googling my name with quotes returns 3 hits, i have a pretty rare combination of first and last names.
- willcode4beer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Getting it into court may be a difficult issue. Candidate rejected because of an internet search probably will not be told the reason. Also, when you post something online YOU are making it PUBLIC INFORMATION. It not very likely that you are going to get a grant of privacy for something YOU make public.
Now the main issue you bring up is when something is found about another person with the same name and other details (for example, I went to high school with a guy who had the same first/last name as me, in college, there was another guy with the same first/last name), hiring managers will probably err on the side of safety, and you'll probably never find out about "why" you got rejected, because in order to protect themselves, they probably won't mention the internet search. - TedTschopp, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1The reason probably isn't that they had too much fun one night in college, it's that they didn't understand the image certain actions create. While it might be appropriate for a college student to attend the kegger, it might not exactly be the image you want out there as a 1st year employee working at a law firm. It's about marketing and image. It's about selling yourself.
- shefftim, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Google are exploring whether they can cache the entire web on a weekly basis, so people can search back through the web by date (time) as well as across it.
The implication is that even taking you're photo etc off Facebook doesn't mean it's now off the Web. Search back by year and month and it could still be found.
And when employers (or a colleague who doesn't like you) get their hands on face recognition software as well... - willcode4beer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Similar results here. Googling my name (first+last) gave about a million and a half hits. Adding my middle name cut it down to upper thirties and none of them were me. Most of the results were for people with very prominate positions in government and accedemia W00t!
Of course, if they googled my nick, they'd probably find out all about me - xmodem2, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1The best defence against this is to have a common name. I've tried googling my name, the first ten pages had nothing to do with me (at which point i stopped looking) Most of them are obviously not me (as in, they live in a different country)
- Alex2, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1You could just change your name. Google something that looks good, then change.
- profJohn, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3It's a great topic, but not a particularly good article on it. Sorry, not digg-worthy in my book.
- DooDah, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1LMAO,
me too looks like we are safe, but why have incriminating things about yourself in the first place? - ledurz, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3How exactly does this work? You would have to have an unusual or rare name, because I put mine in and got a bunch of other people. I even tried with my middle initial, and I still got the same result.
Maybe I won't get hired due to a lack of information... - jw53z, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Argz.. 2 options
1. The future will be bright(er) and companies will wink (to some degree) at your history
2. The whole Internet is going to be censured (freedom as in unconscious (tabooish(?)) censorship)) and young people should become adult-like as soon as possible. Hell!, this is a twofold burden!
(Naturally there always will be anomalies on the web :-))
Q: "Should you be able to remove your email address on the web?, (without changing the rest of the information)" - giraldus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0You are making the assumption that the person who does the search is as sophisticated a search engine user as you are... we are talking about corporate recruiters here, and not even the most senior ones among them, since we are probably talking about initial filtering here, keep that in mind and start worrying: your very common name might actually create odd associations on the web, folks with whom might not necessarily want to be confused. Oh and the fact that someone lives in a different country doesn't mean much: I have lived in -- i.e., not just visited -- half a dozen different countries, and my name can be found associated with as many exotic different addresses...
- ShyGuy91284, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Try to make it work in your favor. Help people a lot on forums related to your field. That's good info that could help you get an interview/job. All I found was me asking a qustion on a forum (probably bad and makes me look incompetent to general personell recruiters that don't understand technology, even though everyone has to learn stuff from somewhere), and reporting of a software bug on sourceforge (good).
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