How to Bury Digital Dirt
January 27, 2011
One of the questions that I’m frequently asked as an expert on how to employers can and should use Facebook for recruiting is what candidates and others should do if they find that there is information on-line about themselves that is not positive. In short, how do you bury your digital dirt?
There are three primary techniques for burying your digital dirt:
- Ask the owner of the blog or otherwise web site on which your digital dirt is located to remove the undesirable content. Many will. Some won’t.
- Generate lots and lots of positive Internet content about yourself. Get your own blog and post entry after entry, with each including your name. Post lots of comments to other blogs, with each including your name. Answer questions about your career experience through our Facebook Career Blog application. Submit lots of articles to free content exchange web sites, with each including your name. Create a profile at LinkedIn. Each of those blogs, comments, and articles creates a new entry in the search engine results at Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. and each new entry will likely force your digital dirt further and further down the search results. It is much less likely that someone will find your digital dirt if it is on page five of the search results than if it is near the top of the first page.
- If you can, post a comment to the offending blog article or otherwise present your side of the story. In other words, fight speech with speech. Accept that the other side will have a voice but don’t allow them to have the only voice in the discussion. Include yours and then let the readers decide which is more believable. Hopefully your voice will be the one of reason and be favored by the readers you most care about.
