Would you feel comfortable to encourage your potential next employer to google you?

They will do that anyways before they invite you to an interview, and chances are that at that point you don’t have much control over what they find. That process has to start much earlier. And yes, do do have some control over these results. Try to google my name (just like on the cards above, search for Karl Heinz Kremer). What you will find is the result of many years of work. Last time I checked, on the first three pages of search results there was only one link that was not about me.

Of course, some of the information about me is not available or easily accessed by just searching for my name, but when you either search for a user name that I use on most social media sites (e.g. Flickr, Twitter, …), or my email address, you’ll find the other “stuff”. You would find these items also by searching for my name, but they would show up a lot further down in the search results.

Having that many “good” links at the top makes sure that anything you find undesirable will show up way down, and people may not have the patience to go that far down in Google’s search results (and no, there is nothing online about me that I would not be proud to share with a potential future employer).

To find out what Google knows about you, google yourself. Don’t just do that once, but setup a Google Alert so that you’ll receive an email whenever new information about you shows up. Also, setup a Google profile for yourself. That will always show up on the first page of search results when somebody searches for you name.

So, how do you get your name up to the top of the Google search results?

• Get involved in online projects (I spent quite some time working on several open source projects)
• Comment on blog posts written by others
• Make sure that you use your full name whenever you engage in anything online (e.g. on Twitter, or when writing comments on blogs)
• Link from the pages you control to other pages about yourself (e.g. from your Twitter or LinkedIn profile page)
• Consider starting to blog yourself

I have to admit that I have it fairly easy: My name is not that common, and somebody with a more common name will have a harder time getting their own information to the top of a Google search result – especially when a celebrity shares that name.

So again, would you feel comfortable when your future boss googles you? If not, do something about it and change how you get your name out…