The internet is written in ink

Managing your online presence in the age of Twitter

Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg in “The Social Network” | Columbia Pictures

In “The Social Network,” Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is dressed down by his ex-girlfriend for his misogynistic comments about her on his blog.

“The internet isn’t written in pencil, Mark,” she says. “It’s written in ink.”

It’s an important idea – one that sometimes gets lost as we immerse ourselves in LinkedIn and Twitter and all the rest of the digital footprints we leave around the internet on a regular basis.

And it’s one that many older people, who didn’t grow up in the social media age, have trouble managing.

These footprints are easy to follow, especially for someone like your prospective employer — who has a vested interest in finding out as much about you as she possibly can.

One of my favorite examples: years ago back in the blog days, a couple of extremely vile right-wing bloggers, Kim and Connie du Toit, were trying to set up a business developing software for homeschooling parents to track their children’s educational progress. Good idea, but even they didn’t expect that their online output (which included calls for turning Mecca into a glass parking lot and the lynching of their political enemies) would be a problem in a seemingly unrelated field.

But when potential investors read their blogs, the investors (understandably) ran scared. The project died.

Now I’m guessing that your LinkedIn output probably doesn’t include calls for mass murder of Muslims. But it’s important to remember that the impression you make on an employer extends far beyond your carefully-crafted resume and cover letter.

So you need to consider, every time you leave a footprint online – is this something you wouldn’t mind your mother reading about you? How about your boss?

Yes, that’s a harsh, and not very fun, standard. But when you’re looking for a job, it’s the (new) world we live in.

So here are some suggestions on how to manage your online presence when you are job hunting.

• Work on your LinkedIn profile. I’ve written about this before, so you can check my advice here and here. This is one of the most visible, and also most controllable, parts of your online presence. Make it count.

• Get recommendations. This mainly applies to LinkedIn, because it’s easy to add recommendations to your profile. “Social proof” like that improves your online presence greatly.

• Google yourself. This isn’t about getting stuff taken down. It’s so you are armed with knowledge of how you could potentially come across to an employer.

• Create your own website. There are free and low-cost ways to do this, more every day. And it’s the ultimate example of a space online that you control. Let me know if you would like me to create a guide on this.

• Consider pruning your Facebook. By that I mean deleting embarrassing or mean photos and posts, making things private if they should be private, etc. Think about my previous “would you want your mother to read this?” standard.

• Update your information regularly. Scrutinize all your profiles on all your social media channels, for example. Do they accurately reflect your current situation and give the best impression?

• Separate personal and professional. Decide which channels are for your professional life (like LinkedIn) and which are for your personal life (like Instagram), and adjust your privacy settings (and your posting) accordingly.

• Think before you post. Will this help or hurt your job search?

• Protect your data. Turn on two-factor authentication, if it’s available. Make sure you know all your passwords, never share them, and know how to get your accounts back if they are stolen.

Confession time: during the Dubya era, I wrote an angry political blog under a pseudonym. It included some salty language. (No, I’m not going to link to it.) I did it as a release valve for what I was feeling at the time. But I probably should have just poured my thoughts into a Word doc.

On “30 Rock,” diva Jenna Maroney was getting a lot of publicity for being a judge on a show called “America’s Kidz Got Singing.” Her online profile was boosted.

Jenna: When you Google ‘Jenna Maroney’ now, *I* come up first. Not the Jenna Maroney who electrocuted all those horses.

Liz: Jenna, that was you.

Hope everyone had a great Labor Day Weekend. See you next week.