rockthejob.com
“Inform. Improve. Employ.”
After being directed to RockTheJob , (by my lecturer for Enterprise 2.0) I decided to discuss it in my blog. RockTheJob is a site about building your personal online portfolio to enhance your “googleability” and enhance your “hirability” when that dream job comes along. More importantly it is about understanding that although all of us wish our “social media” lives were separate from our work lives, this in reality is not the case. The line that once distinguished our personal or private lives from our work lives has been blurred by the ability for anyone to potentially browse your name on the internet. As a result, we must all be careful about what we put online and in the eyesight of future employers.
RockTheJob is a web site designed to help students understand that anything that they upload to a social media site whether it be text, images, videos or such can potentially be viewable by your current or future employer. You may say that this is “crossing the line” or “that silly photo is harmless”. You may also say, “Why do my employers care? I’m not at work.” But the reality is if you are working for a company you are representing their brand. How you behave in a social setting reflects or will reflect on them and can also tell a lot about your person. Check out Episode 2: Keg Stand and Your Career to find out more.
So of course, when using social media you must take care in uploading or posting any material that could be harmful to your reputation.
The site also offers ideas on how to improve your personal profile online to enhance your chances of getting hired. A piece of information I found particularly interesting was “how to make yourself dominate a Google Search”. SOme tips for doing this include:
- Signing up for as many social media sites as possible
- Sign up for websites that update their content rapidly (for example, Twitter)
- Use your full name as the username for that website
More tips can be found at: RockTheJob Episode 9: Own the Front Page of Google
I found this website very much eye opening and I hope you all take the time to give it a browse becuase you never know, it could save your job or be the difference between getting the dream job and not!
Source: Dempsey, R., & Pettit, N. (2009). Rock the Job. Retrieved August 5, 2009, from http://rockthejob.com
Ben McCallum's Blog 
Hi Ben,
Good post. What other resources can you find in relation to personal branding? … branding of companies using social media?
~ Jason
Hi Ben,
I’m in total agreement about this. I’ve actually tried following the steps about Googling myself, and found next to nothing. However it was good to see that I had some professional credibility tied to my wiki profile from work as well information regarding my ties to Golden Key.
I think having a profile on something widely used, like Atlassian Confluence, or even a website with updated metadata can also help improve searchability.
Thanks
Best Regards
Donald
Thanks for the reply!
I can find myself on about the second google page. So I’m working my way up there… Hopefully by the end of this subject I’ll make the front page.
Look forward to reading more posts from you. 🙂
-Ben
Hi Ben!
Good job!
I totally agree with you and the rockthejob team!
They are doing a really good job!
About googling yourself, not later than last nite I started an experiment on my googling name part. What’s about? Every week you google and bing your name and see where your name appears in the top 50 of each search engine. Doing this on a weekly basis, you can compare and check the “google/bing” behaviour regarding to the amount of articles you post and “unique visitors” you have a week. I will write the about the results of this experiment in 3 months! Feel welcome to do the same! 😉
Keep up the good “job”!
Cheers mate!
Thanks for the reply!
That’s an awesome experiment you’ve got going there. You’ll definitely have to keep me posted.
-Cheers, Ben
Hi Ben,
Thanks for the post about Rock the Job. We hope that it can help you. For Nick and myself the topics on which we speak are very important to both students and anyone else who is on the hunt for a job. The lines between online and offline are blurring more and more each day, and regardless of what we would like in terms of privacy, that too is going away. Learning how to work in this emerging world, and how it applies to employment, is the topic we are tackling.
We look forward to any experience and insight you can bring too. Let us know! Thanks again and good luck with everything.
Not a problem Robert,
Its great to see someone is standing up and getting the word out about the changes occurring in the real world. It seems that in the area you are concerned there are two kinds of people:
– Those who don’t know that employers are looking at your social media pages
– Those who do know this happens but don’t speak up about it
But it is great to see that RockTheJob doesn’t fit into either of these categories and is getting the word out to students, job seekers and even those currently employed. Its a competitive market and anything to help us get the job or keep the job is a blessing.
Keep up the good work!
-ben