Recruiters Still Digging, Finding Digital Dirt

Posted By: Robyn Greenspan
Filed Under: robyn greenspan, market trends, identity management

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Recruiters Still Digging, Finding Digital Dirt

When ExecuNet began researching in 2005 how publicly available online information influenced executive hiring, three-quarters of the search firm recruiter respondents revealed they were already Googling candidates to find information beyond the résumé. As a result, more than one-quarter of recruiters had eliminated a candidate because of what they found online.

We've continued to monitor this trend, developing a series of reports on Digital Dirt that raised awareness of online reputation management, and our 2010 data casts no doubt that recruiters have fully adopted Googling as a best practice with 90 percent regularly conducting this activity. Forty-six percent uncovered digital deal-breakers, such as ethics violations, falsified employment history and felony convictions, which lead to eliminating candidates from consideration.

We've continued to monitor this trend, developing a series of reports on Digital Dirt that raised awareness of online reputation management, and our 2010 data casts no doubt that recruiters have fully adopted Googling as a best practice with 90 percent regularly conducting this activity. Forty-six percent uncovered digital deal-breakers, such as ethics violations, falsified employment history and felony convictions, which lead to eliminating candidates from consideration.

The younger generations — digital natives — who largely live online have to make efforts to separate themselves from their less-professional identities when they enter the workforce, but for successfully established executives, they'll have to work to become visible and distinguish themselves. In our most recent research, 80 percent of executive recruiters said a candidate's job prospects improve when positive information is found online.

With this research in mind, take some time to:

Find what's online about you.
Work to correct/eradicate anything that doesn't reflect your name well.
Develop a plan to establish visibility, both on the Internet at-large and niche communities where your peers dwell.

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Robyn Greenspan's avatar Robyn Greenspan
Robyn Greenspan is the Editor-in-Chief at ExecuNet, where she is responsible for setting and driving the editorial content engagement strategy across the private business network's publications and expert-led programming. She is also a Huffington Post blogger. You can follow her on Twitter @RobynGreenspan

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Posted by Colleen Aylward
06/11 @ 01:10 PM

Robyn, although this is not a new topic, I'm so glad you are writing about it in an analytical/factual fashion instead of the usual emotional opinions with which we are normally inundated on this subject. I'm going to repost this on our InterviewStudio blog site, since the object of the new branding game is for executives (and other job seekers) to take control of their brand.

I can't tell you how many executive job search seminars I've offered wherein the highest level of exec in the room still scoffs at the need for managing their own social data. Most believe there is nothing out there about them until I bring up one or two of the random spidering sites like MyLife or show them a golf trip photo of themselves on Flickr!

Using the internet to search for data is such a standard practice that it floors me when execs are in denial about the same use for obtaining "hiring data". The practice is here to stay - which changes "job search" dramatically from the candidate side of the table, in that there is now a lot of homework for the job candidate to do when thinking about launching a job search.

- Check Google about yourself
- Check Yahoo and Bing and Facebook and Flickr and Mylife and Zoominfo and a dozen other sites where you might be mentioned
- Start blogging on sites that are relevant to your areas of expertise and use keywords in your blog entries that you want in your "brand".
- Add a middle initial or name to your common name if there are others out there close to yours
- Get your LinkedIn profile up to date with keywords, connections, groups, and recommendations

These are just a few tips about counteracting Digital Dirt!

Thanks again, Robyn, for the article that should be posted everywhere!