Employers googling you...

So we all know that almost all employers will google you these days and have a good nosy at your Facebook/Twitter. Grand.

The problem is, how do they know it's you? I ask because I was recently turned down for a job and when I asked for feedback, I was told it was due to my 'online presence'. I was pretty taken aback, as I use Twitter for professional purposes only, have a blog related to my work and keep my Facebook very clean and hardly ever post. There are no embarrassing pictures or rants.

I asked the HR woman to send me the links to these objectionable pages, and she did. Only they weren't mine. Yes, I lost out on a job because this company just assumed it must be me (same name, similar age, live in same city). I was absolutely fuming and as you can imagine, suggested that if they want to use online profiles, they really should be absolutely certain it's you - but how can they be? My name would be fairly common and a google brings up a variety of pages.

Not happy at all. :mad:

biko

Sounds like you should should write a letter/mail to the HR manager and the hiring manager.
It's a good thing you asked, who knows how many more mistakes they've made.

bassybekx

I myself really should take more care of my online presence .. however my objection to companies doing this is that they should in fact inform you they are going to do it or at least request your social media profiles or online networks that way they get the exact information they are seeking.

You could (if you havent already) inform them that the profiles they viewed were incorrect and send them direct links to yourself. Maybe request that they review those and consider you for the role again or a similar role.

bassybekx

bassybekx wrote: »

I myself really should take more care of my online presence .. however my objection to companies doing this is that they should in fact inform you they are going to do it or at least request your social media profiles or online networks that way they get the exact information they are seeking.

You could (if you havent already) inform them that the profiles they viewed were incorrect and send them direct links to yourself. Maybe request that they review those and consider you for the role again or a similar role.

I'm raging with them now, to be honest. It's rare that I'd say I don't want to work somewhere because of something like this, but it's absolutely sickening. I wonder how many more times I've been written off because of this other girl with my name who lives in my city and likes to post pics of herself drunk and stoned. It's just so irresponsible to judge someone on a profile without being 100% sure it's them.

The HR woman was so rude about it as well. She obviously thought she was doing me a favour by bothering to reply to me and her tone was basically 'could you not google yourself and see all the crap you have online?' I don't think it had even occurred to her it might not have been me. Same name, same city, similar profession = definitely me. I just said, "I wasn't aware I was tall and blonde, but thanks for informing me. You might want to check that you actually have the right person next time," and then she came back grovelling.

Unbelievable.

28064212

I would have thought that most companies would check your social media after an initial interview. At least then mistakes like this are a lot less likely

bassybekx

Carolyn Gray Monochrome wrote: »

"I wasn't aware I was tall and blonde, but thanks for informing me. You might want to check that you actually have the right person next time," and then she came back grovelling.

Unbelievable.

well at least you got them grovelling haha .. have they said anything regarding reopening your application?

Mrs OBumble

OP, yes, it sucks, but it's just a factor of the modern world.

In future, you need to provide links to correct profile for you in your application - and during the interview, explicity mention your problem and the obviously physical differences between yourself and the other worman.

Mrs OBumble

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

OP, yes, it sucks, but it's just a factor of the modern world.

In future, you need to provide links to correct profile for you in your application - and during the interview, explicity mention your problem and the obviously physical differences between yourself and the other worman.

There was no opportunity to provide links. It was an online application system with rigid questions. Who gives their employer links to Facebook or Bebo anyway? (I don't even have Bebo - the other 'me' does). If they'd checked after interviewing, this wouldn't have happened because they'd have realised it wasn't me. Just seems insane to make those kind of assumptions.

Nope, no word about reopening it. I think they've already given the job to someone else.

Burning Eclipse

Carolyn Gray Monochrome wrote: »

There was no opportunity to provide links. It was an online application system with rigid questions. Who gives their employer links to Facebook or Bebo anyway? (I don't even have Bebo - the other 'me' does). If they'd checked after interviewing, this wouldn't have happened because they'd have realised it wasn't me. Just seems insane to make those kind of assumptions.

Nope, no word about reopening it. I think they've already given the job to someone else.

If it was me, I would make it my business to contact whomever is the manager of that HR person. Clearly articulate why that person screwed up one of the most basic functions of her job - talent acquisition. Just a thought... not sure it will make you feel better, but it might.

pow wow

If possible you could also run your 1st and 2nd forenames together for job apps as it's remarkably less likely that there'll be another 'you' out there with the same name sequence. I do it for job applications, my name wouldn't be terribly common but I've googled it a few times and it would be difficult to decipher the results for anyone who didn't actually know me.

Burning Eclipse

Burning Eclipse wrote: »

If it was me, I would make it my business to contact whomever is the manager of that HR person. Clearly articulate why that person screwed up one of the most basic functions of her job - talent acquisition. Just a thought... not sure it will make you feel better, but it might.

Done.

pow wow wrote: »

If possible you could also run your 1st and 2nd forenames together for job apps as it's remarkably less likely that there'll be another 'you' out there with the same name sequence. I do it for job applications, my name wouldn't be terribly common but I've googled it a few times and it would be difficult to decipher the results for anyone who didn't actually know me.

I actually do do that. The problem is that Google still brings up people with my first and last name and employers would assume that it's still me and I just left out my middle name. My entire name is pretty common in Ireland (less so in England, where I live, so recruiters may not realise there's a high chance it's not me), to be honest. There are hundreds of us on Facebook, and dozens with the same middle name as well.

Diziet

You should preempt it - set yourself a LinkedIn profile with a good photo of you and include the link in your CV and applications.

Needless to say, Facebook postings should be 'Friends Only'. You cannot prevent an employer from googling you, and they would not be expected to ask for permission to do so, so you need to take steps now that you know there may be a misunderstanding.

Diziet

Diziet wrote: »

You should preempt it - set yourself a LinkedIn profile with a good photo of you and include the link in your CV and applications.

Needless to say, Facebook postings should be 'Friends Only'. You cannot prevent an employer from googling you, and they would not be expected to ask for permission to do so, so you need to take steps now that you know there may be a misunderstanding.

They are. My Facebook is totally private except for the profile picture. The problem is that the Facebook page she saw wasn't mine. I wouldn't find it very appropriate to link to my own Facebook in a job application and I'd imagine people would find it a bit odd?

Just realised there's a girl on Facebook with my name who looks pretty similar to me...gahh! I keep getting random friend requests - it must be all her friends thinking I'm her.

I hate the internet sometimes.

experiMental

Carolyn Gray Monochrome wrote: »

Not happy at all. :mad:

OP :
In your defence: isn't it worrying if people who make ignorant and stupid mistakes like the ones you have mentioned will be in charge of you and your wages? If they make a slip up in checking your suitability for a job, will they also make a slip up in giving you honest feedback or a chance to grow in the company?

I'd say, move on.

guernica

God OP that's terrible. I have a really common name too and never occurred to me something like this could happen.

Irish_Elect_Eng

OP, the best defense is a good offence.

You will be googled, by employers, friends, dates and serial killers :-)

Make sure that your results appear first in Searches for your name.

Take Control !

There are lodes of sites that offer help on how to improve your search results. In particular LinkedIn has a very high weighting in search results so it is worth putting up a decent LinkedIn Profile.

• You Will Be Googled

• HOW TO GET YOUR NAME TO THE TOP OF GOOGLE SEARCH

Mr. Loverman

That's fairly shocking.

If it was the HR person doing the searching, I'm not surprised she got it wrong. They tend to be completely non-technical and (I hate to say this, but it is based on my experience) tend to like a bit of drama. No doubt she was delighted when she "caught you out".

I'm really sorry to hear you had to go through that!

steveLFC24

I had a similar experience a year and half ago, left me absolutely fuming. What I have done since is put my middle name in my facebook, twitter and linkedin profiles, as well as on my CV. While it is still not ideal and can lead to mistakes, it does reduce the risk of being incorrectly identified. Plus I simply couldn't think of anything else.

P_1

Having your surname as gaeilge for the likes of Facebook could also be useful in situations like these

P_1

P_1 wrote: »

Having your surname as gaeilge for the likes of Facebook could also be useful in situations like these

No it wouldn't, because they'll still think the other person/people they find is/are me! I don't mind them finding the real me, that's the point, but I don't want them to come across this other girl whose profile pic is her wearing her knickers on her head and think it's me. I did briefly consider putting my surname as gaeilge on my CV, but it may well put employers off, as it looks so foreign and totally unpronounceable. Plus, I'd feel a bit wanky doing it, as I don't speak Irish. Hmm.

MissFlitworth

We advertised a role recently and a lot of cvs that came in had a photo on them, which I hadn't seen before but now wonder if it's for that reason!

What I would do in your situation is get a decent shot of yourself for your cv, use it as your linkedin photo image (and include a link to your Linkedin profile on your cv, you're right that personal facebook page would look a little wanky but you could include Linkedin and/or if you had a Facebook page for your business). From reading your posts in the past I think you do freelance translation? (apologies if wrong) so set up a Facebook page for Your Name Translation if you don't already have one, if you blog or have a website link it to your name as well and include the same photo in your profile. If you have a very private facebook page it might not be a bad idea to set up a dummy one that can be found by recruiters with a photo that is clearly you (no pants on head ) Basically try and own your own name online as much as possible. The Mashable link Irish_Elect_Eng posted is really good info

Oh - I'm not actually sure if this affects how you're found on Facebook when people search your name through a search engine at all but depending on when you set up your profile your username could be a nickname. I set mine up really far back in the day so my profile url is facebook.com/horriblenicknameidon'tuseanymore. I have facebook on lockdown and several people with the same actual name as me who are super active online so I don't know if that helps hide my profile but I do know I'm not that easy to find. If I actively wanted people to find my facebook profile I'd look at changing that or setting up a new one

To be honest, if a company will prowl through my online profiles and discard me based on that, good riddance.

HR personnel shouldn't even be looking at that sort of stuff. Private lives are private, and your work experience and education should be enough to prove you are a competent, hard-working professional.

It was amazingly poor form to dismiss you like that, and even worse for a HR person to be borderline insulting towards you based on her false information. I hope you'll talk with the head of HR and explain what happened. If nothing else, you don't deserve to be treated so poorly.

28064212

Phantasos wrote: »

HR personnel shouldn't even be looking at that sort of stuff. Private lives are private, and your work experience and education should be enough to prove you are a competent, hard-working professional.

Private lives are not private when they're published. A company has every right to consider their employee's public image

kevohmsford

I am currently doing interviews and so I decided to get rid of Facebook for a few months. I also changed one of my references to see if it makes a difference.
All companies are going to do a background check.

chinwag

28064212 wrote: »

Private lives are not private when they're published. A company has every right to consider their employee's public image

Broadly, I'd agree, but hasn't this thread illustrated how inaccurate and misleading online information can be?

28064212

chinwag wrote: »

Broadly, I'd agree, but hasn't this thread illustrated how inaccurate and misleading online information can be?

The mistake wasn't looking online, it was not checking that the information they had was right. If, for example, the HR person saw TCD on the CV and rejected it because they though it stood for Tiddly College, Doncaster, you wouldn't say the process was wrong, you'd say the HR person was.

28064212

28064212 wrote: »

Private lives are not private when they're published. A company has every right to consider their employee's public image

But where does it stop? Are they doing a quick, general search to make sure there's nothing extremely worrying about the candidate they should know? Are they going through someone's Twitter account tweet-by-tweet? Are they checking peoples' Facebook friends for other pictures that are hidden from my personal account?

At what point does it go too far? Unless you're a public representative or a politician, I don't see how a picture of me on a night out, or a throwaway comment on a GAA match on Twitter is of any importance to a company.

28064212

Phantasos wrote: »

But where does it stop? Are they doing a quick, general search to make sure there's nothing extremely worrying about the candidate they should know? Are they going through someone's Twitter account tweet-by-tweet? Are they checking peoples' Facebook friends for other pictures that are hidden from my personal account?

At what point does it go too far? Unless you're a public representative or a politician, I don't see how a picture of me on a night out, or a throwaway comment on a GAA match on Twitter is of any importance to a company.

In what scenario do you think a comment on a GAA match is going to affect your application? Or, for that matter, a "normal" (not boozed out of your head) photo from a night out? If you're going to publish things in a public manner, you have to accept the consequences. If you don't want things to be public, don't publish them

28064212

28064212 wrote: »

In what scenario do you think a comment on a GAA match is going to affect your application? Or, for that matter, a "normal" (not boozed out of your head) photo from a night out? If you're going to publish things in a public manner, you have to accept the consequences. If you don't want things to be public, don't publish them

That's what I'm saying though. Isn't 'online presence' a very subjective thing from HR person to HR person?

My Facebook is private, but I do have a Twitter account with a lot of harmless tweets. I just wonder what would happen if, for example, a pro-life HR person saw a tweet about supporting the new legislation? Or if a biased recruiter saw that a person was black/gay/had a disability? Isn't it just another way of discriminating without getting caught?

April O Neill

Carolyn Gray Monochrome wrote: »

They are. My Facebook is totally private except for the profile picture. The problem is that the Facebook page she saw wasn't mine. I wouldn't find it very appropriate to link to my own Facebook in a job application and I'd imagine people would find it a bit odd?

No, but if you link your Linkedin profile with a good, clear photo, then when they start looking at FB pages, they'll realise which ones aren't you.

28064212

Phantasos wrote: »

That's what I'm saying though. Isn't 'online presence' a very subjective thing from HR person to HR person?

My Facebook is private, but I do have a Twitter account with a lot of harmless tweets. I just wonder what would happen if, for example, a pro-life HR person saw a tweet about supporting the new legislation? Or if a biased recruiter saw that a person was black/gay/had a disability? Isn't it just another way of discriminating without getting caught?

All hiring processes are subjective. Unless you're going to start submitting anonymised CVs with the school names stripped out and have interviews from behind screens with an fake voicebox, bias is impossible to strip out.

Not to mention that there is absolutely no way to ever stop HR from google searching you.

starlit

Its not fair they did that they should have confirmed it was you especially if your name is common.

28064212

28064212 wrote: »

All hiring processes are subjective. Unless you're going to start submitting anonymised CVs with the school names stripped out and have interviews from behind screens with an fake voicebox, bias is impossible to strip out.

Not to mention that there is absolutely no way to ever stop HR from google searching you.

Yeah, very true.

I wonder do some companies continue to monitor an employee's internet presence after they're hired?

28064212

Phantasos wrote: »

Yeah, very true.

I wonder do some companies continue to monitor an employee's internet presence after they're hired?

Yep

seamus

Its not fair they did that they should have confirmed it was you especially if your name is common.

"Common" is a matter of interpretation though. I would have always thought my name was unusual until I discovered there are loads of Irish people with my name. In the thousands.

Personally I think a facebook profile provides relatively limited information about someone. You're hiring someone to do a job, not to be your buddy. So their likes and hates and fears and bull they post on facebook is kind of irrelevant. Though in some cases perhaps it's relevant - if you're hiring someone for marketing or any kind of "presentation" role, like a salesperson or a social media manager, then how they conduct themselves personally online could reveal a lot about them.

And occasionally you can land some screamers; like a former boss of mine who found an applicant on facebook whose latest status read, "Just lost ANOTHER job, but I swear it wasn't my fault this time".

I think a bit like lateral thinking questions and the fad of having twenty interviews, HR people are learning that facebook is of limited use in establishing what people are really like in the workplace, and they'll stop doing it in a couple of years.

It's probably ridiculously annoying when a HR person mistakenly rejects you, but you should probably take it as a close call. Incompetent HR departments usually reflect a general culture in the company.

I have exactly the opposite problem. If you google my name, you get three pages of hits for a guy who works in my field, went to the same college (and same course) as me, grew up less then a km from me, but is older and has about ten years more experience than me and would be considered a zen master in a couple of niche topics.
It's my fear that I'll arrive into an interview and I'll sorely disappoint because I'm not that guy. Hopefully they do some basic cross-checks between dates and employers and realise that guy isn't me.

Googling my name gets my LinkedIn, my Twitter, but also Facebook profiles for two people (neither one me), a winner of a modelling competition (sadly not me) and up until recently... a Youtube video of a guy blowing up a condom on a drunken night out.

April O Neill

I'm the only me in the world. \o/

And when you google my name, you just get my linkedin and a pic that I sent in that the RTE News website put up during the snow from 2010/11. Not too shabby.* If you log in to FB, you'll find my profile. You'll see my cover pics and current profile pic, but that's it.


* As long as they don't find out about the pron career.

April O Neill

April O Neill wrote: »

I'm the only me in the world. \o/

And when you google my name, you just get my linkedin and a pic that I sent in that the RTE News website put up during the snow from 2010/11. Not too shabby.*


* As long as they don't find out about the pron career.

Tsch, yeah right, we know all about your private life in the sewers with the Turtles...

April O Neill

Phantasos wrote: »

Tsch, yeah right, we know all about your private life in the sewers with the Turtles...

Yeah, that's what I meant by porn, duh. You've clearly never seen the outtakes.


:pac:

doovdela

doovdela wrote: »

Its not fair they did that they should have confirmed it was you especially if your name is common.

It's one of those Irish names that's common Ireland but rare in England, if you know what I mean? That probably didn't help anything - she probably assumed that this other one had to be me because my name is so rare (to her).

Carolyn Gray Monochrome

Carolyn Gray Monochrome wrote: »

It's one of those Irish names that's common Ireland but rare in England, if you know what I mean? That probably didn't help anything - she probably assumed that this other one had to be me because my name is so rare (to her).

"Máire Murphy" :P

Faith

This thread is worrying! I have my name in Irish on Facebook to stop myself being searchable (not that there's anything on it I don't want others to see, but I'd rather potential employers weren't looking at it anyway). But it's worrying to think that they could find another profile with the same name as me and assume it's me :eek:.

/edit: I've just checked and I seem to be the only one with my name in Ireland, on Facebook. It's a very English name though, so there's loads in England!

RainyDay

Don't people use Facebook security settings to stop your stuff being visible to all?

ABajaninCork

I do!! If you look for me on FB, there's about a dozen people with the same maiden name as me. And six with my married name. Mind you, all you'll get with my FB profile is a picture of my (sadly passed) cat. Good luck with that one! Friend of mine recently changed his profile name to an 'As Gaelige' version. Given some of the responses on this thread, I'm beginning to realise why!

My LinkedIn? Yes, there's a picture of me on there, but the picture is only visible to my contacts.

runawaybishop

RainyDay wrote: »

Don't people use Facebook security settings to stop your stuff being visible to all?

Not the point of the thread - the OP had her profile secured, she was refused a job due to someone else with the same name having an undesirable online presence.

cloudatlas

Just googled my name, now I'm paranoid!

rox5

Carolyn Gray Monochrome wrote: »

(same name, similar age, live in same city)

How is it that the HR woman could not cop on to the fact that in this person's profile picture that it was obviously not you? Unless do ye happen to look very similiar?

I think you should report her, because it sounds like she is a bit of an idiot, if she cannot do something simple as to find the right online profile of an potential employee.

BaconZombie

Where most of them from Central Europe?
I know it is very common in other parts of Europe to include a photos and they are thought to do this in school.

MissFlitworth wrote: »

We advertised a role recently and a lot of cvs that came in had a photo on them, which I hadn't seen before but now wonder if it's for that reason!

seamus

rox5 wrote: »

How is it that the HR woman could not cop on to the fact that in this person's profile picture that it was obviously not you? Unless do ye happen to look very similiar?

I get the impression that she didn't do an interview, just got a PFO after sending in her CV.

starlit

It all about carbon footprint online but guess you cant do much if your name same as others but if she adjusted her name slightly on her online presence on social networking sites and change to irish way of her name for professional sites she stand out and they hardly make a mistake about online presence.

ABajaninCork

So - Changing my (married) name to an 'as gaelige' version will make me stand out? I can just imagine the barely concealed shock when they meet me!!