Millennials, Is Job Hopping Killing Your Career?
Dan Schawbel is the leading personal branding good for young professionals. Read full profile
People you know or have never met yet are googl'ing you. Permit's confront it, you lot're even google'ing yourself! At the end of 2007, the Pew Internet Research Squad found that 47% of people search for information about themselves online (Self-Googling), which was more than double 5 years ago. It'southward a pretty safe bet that percentage has climbed to over 50 or lx% past this twelvemonth.
Some people might tin it ego-surfing, but it's actually a good practice to meet what results come up upward for your name. Your teachers, friends, family, boyfriends and girlfriends and coworkers are google'ing you lot either for fun or because they want to learn more than near you. Hiring managers desire to run across if you have a clean record in Google, which is your permanent record because every move yous make (aye fifty-fifty a blog annotate) is stored at that place forever. Earlier I went on a second date one time, the girl Google'ed me. If she hadn't liked what she saw, the second date wouldn't have happened. Try doing it right now and see what you get.
There is no hiding from Google!
Google keeps track of just about everything y'all do on the internet. It patrols and captures your online beliefs, such as when you postal service on your web log, tweet using Twitter, join social networks, annotate on other blogs, write articles for online news sources and more than. Aside from the content you create and distribute over the cyberspace, other people are talking about you lot, which ways that Google has a consummate flick (near like an autobiography) of your life. In the digital age, Google is your resume, your permanent record and a journal of your life. Your children and children's children will be able to observe out everything well-nigh yous when they grow older. "Mom, look what I simply found out nearly Dad in Google." Your personal brand tin can't hide from Google. There is one major exception to this though.
Common names
If your proper noun is common, such every bit Mike Smith, so it will be very hard to own your Google results. There are over 54 million results for "Mike Smith" in Google. You won't be able to compete with the athletes and musicians on the outset few pages. If your life goal is to rank in the top ten results, that may be achievable, if you either get very famous or work extremely hard at building content each and every 24-hour interval for your entire life. At the age of sixty you might find out that Google changed their algorithm and you'll lose all that hard piece of work. The indicate being is that you'll have to differentiate your proper noun in order to rank high. I typically recommend you use your middle proper name or a nickname in this case. The worst example scenario is that you change your proper name completely ;).
Celebrity names
Celebrities are very fortunate because they get mass media attending, which means traditional media sources (NY Times, ABC News) write articles about them. These sources rank extremely loftier in Google. We're talking Google PageRank's of eight and higher! Your blog posts near these celebrities will never end up on the top twenty results for their proper noun unless yous are Perez Hilton. If your proper name is the aforementioned as a celebrities, you lot are in big problem. Try searching for Christina Aquilera (21 million results), Britney Spears (88 one thousand thousand), Lil Wayne (forty million) and other major celebrities. Personally, I don't take whatsoever friends with these names, but fifty-fifty with C-level celebrities, y'all don't stand a risk. If you lot are stuck with a celebrity proper noun, I suggest that you build your brand around an area of your expertise or interest and connect it to your brand name.
Unique names
While growing up, you might have been made fun of people of your unique name because it was "unlike." Although you were ostracized and fabricated fun of, right now you get to laugh at anybody else! With a distinct name, you are able to easily dispense the results for your name on search engines. When you lot get to your high school reunion and come across your friends, you'll get the concluding express mirth because you tin can be visible and command perceptions, while they simply cannot. When you Google your name, whether you take results that reflect your make, yous'll see how difficult information technology volition be to rank high for information technology or not. Depending on the competition, it may take you a few days or a few months. Over time, if you work very hard, yous'll ain the meridian 10 results for your name.
In my adjacent post, I'll talk about what you can practice to gain command over your Google results and let your personal brand shine through.
Featured photo credit: Adam Winger via unsplash.com
Source: https://www.lifehack.org/363683/millennials-job-hopping-killing-your-career