Google Me

A few weeks ago, a cousin from the States advised me to Google myself and start acting with common sense on what I find. I thought it was a prank, until she told me that if I wanted a good reputation, I should do it.

This advice took root somewhere. She was nixed by two potential employers, and is now paying a private company good money to clean up, mainly because of her pages in Facebook.

Let’s just say her account had several photos and comments that showed lack of judgment. Let’s add that she and her co-workers from her previous job exchanged posts that cast her former employer in a bad light. Throw in a line from her profile that says she usually sleeps in late and prefers the afternoon as her optimal time of day.

Maybe she thought the photos were funny, or that the posts were harmless, as she was no longer with the company anyway. But then again, maybe the two bosses that considered her application had concerns, so they decided to do a background check. How convenient it is that those two bosses had internet access. Google is, after all, user friendly.

Here we were thinking the internet could help us build social networks, and so we put almost every aspect of our lives in public display. Little do we recognize it could also pull us down. In most cases, all it takes is a Google page, our name, and a click.