Last Sunday, June 11th, the New York Times printed an interesting article on 'online personas' and job interviewees. The basic premise of the article is that your online persona can, in fact, work against you while you seek a job. The problem is especially rampant for college grads, who are young enough to still be partying and naive enough to post things on the web and consider them 'private'. It seems that many companies, in the course of doing job applications, now take it as a matter of course to Google the applicants.

In my case, the poor personnel director would soon be bored out of his mind. I confess to frequently 'vanity surfing' my name in both Google and Yahoo. A quick search on 'Nola Redd' turns up numerous freelance articles I have penned (none of them as fun as the now-full and quoted Lying Your Way to the Top essay mentioned in the NYT). In my husband's case, he seems to be a professional basketball player. Too bad we don't get the other Michael's paychecks! Neither of us put potentially incriminating information on the web - I won't even post in my personal blog about my mother-in-law because it is possible she might actually read it one day.

However, many of the students listed found themselves in trouble for pictures and information they posted. I am of two minds on the idea of the employer knowing so much about the person they are seeking to hire. On the one hand, as long as an employee behaves, I don't have a problem. On the other, if you are getting ready to hire a college student who features pictures of themselves passed out drunk, you wonder how well they will do at getting to work on time (and working effectively) the next morning. If the same student routinely breaks the laws and brags about it, you wonder how well their 'office morality' is going to hold up. I'm still debating either way.

But this entry promised to take a look at how such things can affect small business owners. Of course, there is the obvious; we can all say, Google, and start running web searches on potential employees. I suggest, however, that we first run a search on ourselves.

Let's suppose that Susie's Bakery wants to do business with your company (you can sell wholesale flour in this example; that way you get to make some dough...or is it Susie who makes the dough?). You have come recommended to her through another business acquantance, or perhaps she saw you at a culinary business expo. She snagged your business card and decides to run a quick check on you - she probably just wants to find your website or see if anyone has posted any glowing commentaries (or acid denunciations) on you.

Susie hits the Google button, and along with your company website, Susie finds your blog. Susie clicks the link. And there you are, perhaps in your underwear, perhaps passed out dunk, perhaps just bragging about something you managed to get away with in your company. After reading, Susie decides that she is not interested in doing business with you.

Another possiblity surfaced in my mind after reading an article by Good Housekeeping on teens and cyber bullying (I couldn't find the article on GH's site, but similar information is given here). An account was made in the GH article of a teen whose friend had posted a picture of them online. The picture was an obvious fake, but it made me wonder what our friends might be posting about us online. For instance, you might be taking care to keep your blogs and web sites and MySpace space cleaned up, but your friend or family member may have added something about you to their online presence.

As small business owners, we have to take even more care to keep our names cleaned up and our online presence as positive as possible. Running a monthly check of our name, our employees names (check this story where a Delta flight attendant was fired over her blog despite it not mentioning her company's name), and our business will help us find any potential problems. You can also note if a customer complains about you in their blog, and address the issue. Overcoming a 'bad' reputation is much more difficult than keeping your 'good' one polished and sparkling.