Some Kemper Scholars are troubled by the advice we give them that they should spend some time marketing themselves as future employees, including on the internet. What bothers them is that the idea of marketing oneself seems demeaning, inhumane, dishonest, even tawdry. 

It might be the term “marketing” that is the problem. We’re used to the idea of marketing things, but people are not things. So let’s change vocabulary. What we are talking about is presenting ourselves to others at our best, the way we would like them to see us. Human beings have been doing that for at least thousands of years. We know from wall paintings that the ancient Egyptians – men and women — used cosmetics, wore jewelry, and cared about style. It’s a human thing.

It used to be how we bathed, dressed, combed our hair, smiled and showed courtesy that mattered. Now we have the internet to worry about: to use to our advantage and to be alert to.

Earlier this year, The Washington Post reported that 70 percent of hiring managers say they’ve decided not to hire an applicant because of information they’ve found online (January 28, 2011). The results are from a survey of 1,200 respondents in the United States and Western Europe which Microsoft commissioned last November.

Unfortunately, nothing about you on the internet ever goes away. So if you have some questionable stuff about you, it could hurt. Still, it is good to know what is out there so you can be prepared. Try a site like www.webmii.com where you put in your name and see where you appear across the internet. When I did myself, I found many things I’d expected. But I hadn’t expected to see a comment I wrote in reply to a question on a friend’s travel blog. I had thought of myself as writing to her and figured that her friends might see what I’d written. It hadn’t occurred to me that anyone looking me up could see it. While there was nothing in the comment I regret having written, it made me realize we need to be careful about everything we write on the internet.

www.Socioclean.com will scan your Facebook page and give you an “objective” view of whether it might be offensive or present a bad image of you.

Cecilia Kang, author of the Washington Post article, explained that “Recruiters said they search for information about candidates through search engines, on social networking sites, personal Web sites and blogs, gaming sites, online classified sites and through professional background checkers.” That’s a lot of stuff to keep track of.

People have been rejected because of what they have written, pictures they have posted, and lifestyle choices they have revealed. If you were in a position to hire someone, would you select a candidate who posted a status update that said “I was destroyed all weekend. Don’t think I’ll be acing today’s accounting test”?

And don’t forget the subtler things, like otherwise harmless photos that make you look as if you wouldn’t be a serious or reliable employee. Is the photo of you tongue-kissing the 25₵-a-ride horse outside Trader Joe’s really indispensible on your Facebook page?

Perhaps these points have been more about oversight and control of what you put out there about yourself than about active marketing. I’ll save that for a subsequent blog post.