Whats the consensus on having an "online presence" for OCI Forum

[Anonymous User]

I heard it can look weird if an employer is googling your name and you are a ghost, as in, no mention of you pops up anywhere online. Further, I heard generally with employment having an "online presence" can be beneficial and starting a blog or website and maybe posting a few reviews for random things, cleaning up your facebook and changing it back to your actual name ect. will help.

My Q, is it beneficial to create a presence or is invisible the safest way?

[bk1]

I heard it can look weird if an employer is googling your name and you are a ghost, as in, no mention of you pops up anywhere online.

Where did you hear this? The best thing that can happen is if you get googled and nothing pops up. Lock down every social media account you have save LinkedIn, imo.

[patrickd139]

I heard it can look weird if an employer is googling your name and you are a ghost, as in, no mention of you pops up anywhere online.

Where did you hear this? The best thing that can happen is if you get googled and nothing pops up. Lock down every social media account you have save LinkedIn, imo.

Gotta +1 this. Maybe for other industries it might be beneficial. But outside legal publications or LinkedIn, I can't see anything else that I would want potential employers to be learning about on the Internet that they can't also see from my résumé and cover letter.

[Pokemon]

Online presence should be linkedin and nothing more (unless there is something that you cannot control, like an article about you).

[Myself]

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[Georgia Avenue]

To clarify, we're saying it's okay to have Facebook/Twitter/Instagram so long as it's locked down and completely private? All I've heard is it's fine so long as it's all private.

The best thing if you're on social media is to be completely locked down, but even then extremely judicious about what you post and what others can see.

[Tom Joad]

Some dood with the same name as me has a retarded Twitter account. What can I do?

[Myself]

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[Myself]

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[RELIC]

No presence is not necessarily a good thing either (more like neutral). I have worked hard to make sure that only positive things pop up when you google me (I have a unique name). Most of it corroborates my resume (a prior job, something I published, my linked-in profile, a mention in a blog about a scholarship I won). However, there was a time when a non-flattering complaint about me would pop up. I paid a company $580 to "google bomb" that information. I am not sure what they did and it definitely changed some of the other stuff around too but the unflattering review is now on page 9 of google.

Again I am not sure what they did to change this. I understand how SEO works generally but I am not sure how you get something to be more buried.

[Myself]

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[Tom Joad]

Some dood with the same name as me has a retarded Twitter account. What can I do?

Is your name pretty common or generic?

No. It is a totally weird name. I think the Twitter account belongs to a high schooler so if somebody looked carefully they could probably guess it isn't me, but why would they investigate that carefully when they can just ding.

[Myself]

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[Bikeflip]

Some dood with the same name as me has a retarded Twitter account. What can I do?

Is your name pretty common or generic?

No. It is a totally weird name. I think the Twitter account belongs to a high schooler so if somebody looked carefully they could probably guess it isn't me, but why would they investigate that carefully when they can just ding.

Not sure, anybody have any suggestions?

Make your own twitter with your photo and have some legal tweets?

[northwood]

the less of an internet trail you leave the better. As stated above, keep the linked in site but hide your online presence elsewhere

[bombaysippin]

No presence is not necessarily a good thing either (more like neutral). I have worked hard to make sure that only positive things pop up when you google me (I have a unique name). Most of it corroborates my resume (a prior job, something I published, my linked-in profile, a mention in a blog about a scholarship I won). However, there was a time when a non-flattering complaint about me would pop up. I paid a company $580 to "google bomb" that information. I am not sure what they did and it definitely changed some of the other stuff around too but the unflattering review is now on page 9 of google.

Again I am not sure what they did to change this. I understand how SEO works generally but I am not sure how you get something to be more buried.

It's not really what they do to bury something else, but instead they make your other things on the internet show up at a higher priority. Through programs and such, they direct a bunch of hits aka traffic to good things about you on the internet (like your scholarship, linked-in account, etc). As those things become the most popular hits, whatever else is not getting as much traffic, will show up later in the google search because google will show you what is most popular for searches (unless they're paid advertisements, which don't have to necessarily be popular).

[patentlaworbust]

Some dood with the same name as me has a retarded Twitter account. What can I do?

Is your name pretty common or generic?

No. It is a totally weird name. I think the Twitter account belongs to a high schooler so if somebody looked carefully they could probably guess it isn't me, but why would they investigate that carefully when they can just ding.

Not sure, anybody have any suggestions?

If it is pretty clear from a quick glance at their Twitter that they are not you, then you have nothing to worry about. Any competent employer will recognize that. If it would take anything more than a quick glance (15 seconds or less) to realize it is not you, then perhaps you should try to distinguish yourself in some regard. Here are a couple ideas:

1) Start using a middle initial or middle name (if you have one) on your resume, Email signature, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. Basically anything you WANT to associate with you should now have this middle initial/name on it.

2) If you don't have a middle name or you simply don't like yours, consider adding an easily identifiable characteristic to your online accounts in an up-front manner. That way, anyone searching for you will immediately associate that account with you and not with the other person. On LinkedIn, make your headline unique to you: "JD Candidate at XYZ Law School" or "2L Law Student and Aspiring Tax Attorney". If you don't have a Twitter, make one. Make your headline something similar as you did for your LinkedIn. Even if you never use it, it is identifiable as yours, and that should be all that matters.

[Anonymous User]

No presence is not necessarily a good thing either (more like neutral). I have worked hard to make sure that only positive things pop up when you google me (I have a unique name). Most of it corroborates my resume (a prior job, something I published, my linked-in profile, a mention in a blog about a scholarship I won). However, there was a time when a non-flattering complaint about me would pop up. I paid a company $580 to "google bomb" that information. I am not sure what they did and it definitely changed some of the other stuff around too but the unflattering review is now on page 9 of google.

Again I am not sure what they did to change this. I understand how SEO works generally but I am not sure how you get something to be more buried.

I may have to do this. I too have a unique name and one unflattering item out there. It was once on the first page. I successfully pushed it to page 2 by creating a bunch of accounts under my real on fb, LinkedIn, Flickr, etc. Time took care of the rest and the stuff hovers between pages 3-5. But it occasianally creeps back up to page 2.

[Anonymous User]

When I was doing screenings for hirings, I always did a google search. If I am searching for a person and don't find anything, I feel a little suspicious and will likely go to page 2, 3, etc. on google. If I find something right away (linkedin, twitter, facebook) I'll glance at them and then move on. So I think zero presence is better than a bad presence, but worse than a normal neutral presence. Typical search was name + school for a less unique name, so make sure anything you want to show up in a search has your law school attached to it.

[cinephile]

I have both a fake facebook and a fake twitter, wherein I say things publicly like "Such a beautiful day!" and "Love all my friends!" and "Brunch is the best meal of the day!" other banal things like that. I don't particularly know that it's helped, but it's fun to update every so often.

[wannabelawstudent]

Some dood with the same name as me has a retarded Twitter account. What can I do?

Hey, I had someone with a google + account with the same name, had some weird statuses and it showed up when you googled my name. I contacted google and said this guy has fake, explained what was happened, sent copies of my information (scanned drivers license) and they took down the account.

I got a question, I write for a media site, and when you google my name, the first like 20 pages are just articles I've written. The articles are not offensive (just generic news) or anything but wondering if this is ok?(I can easily switch them to a pen name but would have to do it now for it to disappear from my google results by the time OCIs roll around. ).

[Tom Joad]

If it is pretty clear from a quick glance at their Twitter that they are not you, then you have nothing to worry about. Any competent employer will recognize that. If it would take anything more than a quick glance (15 seconds or less) to realize it is not you, then perhaps you should try to distinguish yourself in some regard. Here are a couple ideas:

1) Start using a middle initial or middle name (if you have one) on your resume, Email signature, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. Basically anything you WANT to associate with you should now have this middle initial/name on it.

2) If you don't have a middle name or you simply don't like yours, consider adding an easily identifiable characteristic to your online accounts in an up-front manner. That way, anyone searching for you will immediately associate that account with you and not with the other person. On LinkedIn, make your headline unique to you: "JD Candidate at XYZ Law School" or "2L Law Student and Aspiring Tax Attorney". If you don't have a Twitter, make one. Make your headline something similar as you did for your LinkedIn. Even if you never use it, it is identifiable as yours, and that should be all that matters.

That's a good idea. The guy kind of even vaguely looks like a younger version of me so I should pry do something maybe.

[Anonymous User]

I share my name with a starlet/porn star. Very serious, not a flame. That's going to hurt me, isn't it?

[Anonymous User]

I share my name with a starlet/porn star. Very serious, not a flame. That's going to hurt me, isn't it?

I highly doubt it. Most normal people would pretty much assume it's not you. I probably wouldn't put "low budget films" in your interest section though . . .

[Anonymous User]

I share my name with a starlet/porn star. Very serious, not a flame. That's going to hurt me, isn't it?

I highly doubt it. Most normal people would pretty much assume it's not you. I probably wouldn't put "low budget films" in your interest section though . . .

I'll scratch that off then. Thanks for the tip, LOL.