Five Problems with Virtual Communication: Your Online Life is Very Much Public

Imagine this scene: You've finally got the go ahead to fill the vacancy on your team. You posted the job, screened resumes and are ready to invite the top five candidates in. After the rounds of interviews, there is one candidate that you are particularly interested in. You begin an online search to do some social media recon. You are interested in knowing more about the candidate in and outside of work as the job includes development work. A quick search uncovers some questionable decisions and behaviors. We can never fully anticipate what people will find important in our on-line profiles, it is up to us to define who we are to ensure consistency. This includes: Creating a personal value statement online. Creating and living by personal value statement helps to guide daily activities and give clarity. A published personal value statement helps to define you to others. Why let the rest of the world control the picture of you and develop an opinion of you from their own online trolling? To do this, focus on your message not on yourself. Make sure that people can find you. Be sure that you can maintain your presence as the work that you have done to create your personal value statement shouldn't be wasted because you haven't anticipated the time it takes to maintain your presence. While you can hire a professional, you can first start by doing a Google search of yourself and all names that you have used personally and professionally. Then, clear your cache and research yourself. The first step is to see what is out there about you. Do this quarterly. Then fix it. You can hire a professional to help you. Also discuss your strategy with those in your circle that are likely to tag and post you in a picture or post that might not match your value statement. Some questions you can ask yourself about your value statement are: 1. What do I stand for? 2. What do I love or have a strong passion about and what do I hate (like, litter)? What are my nonnegotiable values - my must haves? What is the problem that I am trying to solve? Once you have written your personal value statement - whether published or not - you have words to live by . Make sure that other people know that to. Stay tuned for tomorrow's topic: The Lack of Emotion