How to Avoid Being a Digital D-bag

“Evaluate your online reputation/digital footprint. What steps can you take to sculpt your reputation into one that is more of your liking?”

With so many hiring managers going to social networking sites to dig up dirt on potential employees such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace – well maybe not MySpace but you know what I mean –   it’s more important now than ever to appropriately manage one’s digital reputation.  But how does one accomplish that without giving off an image of themselves that rings false or feels disingenuous? There is nothing more disappointing than reading the profile of someone you know personally only to discover that their online self is not at all similar to their real self.  And to think for a moment that future employers can’t sift through the malarkey is just naïve. My list below isn’t perfect, but I have some key points that I try to stick to when putting information about myself out there on the worldwide web of lies.

1.      Does this photo place me in a situation where I seldom find myself?

If the answer to this question is yes, then don’t post the photo. Resist the urge to reach into your pocket for your iPhone to tag yourself at an all-night rave if it’s your first time going to a rave, no matter how “in-touch” with the universe you might be feeling at the time. There are always going to be isolated incidents in our lives that are better left private, and even if you do “get freak with the booty clubs,” as Benjamin André so eloquently put it, it’s probably better that you just leave that off your profile altogether.  

2.     Am I keeping it real?

I don’t post tons of political stuff online, although I do have some pretty firm opinions that I will hint toward from time to time. No, I don’t write extensive excerpts about the grossly overinflated U.S. military budget or the world’s uneven distribution of wealth, but I will let others speak for me, in a way, by posting credible, yet somewhat controversial videos, blogs or columns on my Facebook feed.  I refuse to pretend that I don’t care about anything and only comment on pictures of kittens – although so many people actually don’t care about anything – but I’m also not going to proselytize.  Additionally, I’m not going to hide the facts that I like to travel and have a good time, two aspects of my character well represented in my digital footprint. Here, the key is balance.

3.     Would my mom like this?

I swear this is the rule that I most strictly follow and probably should have been number one on this unofficial list, but I never said it was chronologically constructed in terms of importance or how staunchly I adhere, so there you have it.  

Like many of us, my mom has discovered the internet. And in her doing so, she stumbled across Facebook; I am one of her 60 friends on Facebook (25 mutual) and that kind of freaks me out sometimes. Simply put, if I wouldn’t want my mom to see me doing something, then either a) I probably shouldn’t be doing it, or b) even if “a” is true, I still shouldn’t post in on the internet for the world to see – and by world I mean my mom and all of her cronies.