How to wreck your reputation through social networking

Looking around for the your next role may involve approaching contacts via social networking sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook. Indeed any prospective employer would be wise to check out your profile before making an offer – would what they find out about you impress them or send them running for cover? So what can you do to minimise your chances of wrecking your reputation and manage your personal brand? London Career Coach Hannah McNamara of HRM Coaching Ltd explains.

Did you know that only around 15-20% of job vacancies are ever advertised to the public?

That means over 80% of candidates find their job through methods other than responding to adverts in their trade or professional magazines. But how? Well in addition to recruitment agencies and headhunters, many people find their new position through networking. Through meeting people online and offline, getting to know them and finding out when they are hiring.

However – and this is a big warning to you! – there are also a number of people who lose out on landing a job BECAUSE of the networking they have done. How?

Because they haven’t taken the necessary steps to protect their personal brand – in particular their online identity. It’s all too easy to ‘Google’ someone these days and if you use the Google Images feature, you can even find pictures of them within a couple of seconds. When you’ve finished reading this, try Googling yourself and see what comes up.

I’m willing to bet that if you’re on Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace or Bebo, your profile came up (it may have been hidden a few pages into the search results). Even if the person viewing your profile isn’t a member or isn’t signed in, they’ll probably have seen your profile picture. Anyone starting to sweat at this point?

Just taking Facebook as an example, your public profile page appears on Google and in many cases displays a selection of your friends. Hmm…even if your profile pic is perfectly presentable, what about the photos of your friends? Would they impress the HR Director who is looking at your CV right now?

Ok, so if you’ve now started to think about what you can do on a practical level to undo any damage to your reputation, here are some things you can do right now. The tips are about profiles on Facebook, but the principles apply to all social networking sites.

• Change your profile name so that it doesn’t include your full name as it appears on CVs – abbreviate your name or use a nickname. Your real friends will know who you are.
• If you do want prospective employers to find you or you’re using the site for professional networking, seriously think about having TWO profiles, one for friends and one for professional contacts.
• Check your privacy settings and put them up to the highest level. If your friends have a habit of tagging photos of you, go onto the page where the photo appears and click ‘Remove Tag’. Then go to your Privacy settings and alter the settings relating to who can view your pictures and videos. I recommend you set them at maximum privacy if you can bear to.
• Look very carefully at what comments and pictures other people have posted on your profile. If they aren’t saying the right things about you, delete them and make sure that you check regularly to see that those amusing but crude pictures and YouTube videos don’t keep coming back to haunt you!
• Now go to your Applications. If you’ve added applications that won’t impress people, remove them straight away. Employers are rarely interested to know which person from Friends you are most like.
• Now to your Groups. Even if you’ve got your privacy settings up to the max, the instant you join a Group, you’re appearing on the online map. The Groups you join say a lot about you and in many cases mean that your full profile is visible to any other members of that Group. If you in a moment of madness joined the ‘Why I hate my boss’ group or ‘interesting places I’ve had sex at work’, it’s probably time to leave that group.
• Now to your Friends list. Do you really have 347 friends who you see on a regular basis? You’re probably giving every one of them full access to your profle. Just because you’ve decided that photos of you will only be visible to your friends, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t going to show them to anyone else. Especially if you’ve accepted a Friends request from a colleague or ex-colleague. If you really don’t want certain people to see what’s in your profile, you can either adjust your Privacy settings to restrict what people can see or consider removing them from your friends list.
• If you communicate with your friends via the Wall or SuperWall features, remember that you are having a very public conversation. If you post something like “I was so drunk last night I can’t remember what I did” on a friend’s wall, you have absolutely NO control over who is going to see it. Use the private message boards or old-fashioned e-mail for personal communications.
• Finally, if all else fails, close your account and start again.

Now, before you rush off to update your profiles to make them squeaky clean, if employers or colleagues are going to check you out online, you still need to come across as you. If you’re a fun-loving person who only wants to work in companies that have a sense of humour and have some energy about them, that’s what they are going to be looking for on your profile. If you only include air-brushed professional studio photos as profile pics and have no applications at all on your profile, there’s a danger that you’ll come across as a bit dull or not their kind of person. So there’s a balance. Be yourself, but within reason.

© Copyright Hannah McNamara 2008

How to cope with impending redundancy

London Career Coach Hannah McNamara offers some tips if you are facing redundancy.

The British economy isn’t exactly at its strongest level at the moment, which is why so many workers are starting to worry about the prospect of a recession and what that would mean for their job security. Redundancy is something that many people will sadly have to go through in their lives, but with the appropriate career planning you can come through the experience with a better regard for your career and your skills.

If you are facing redundancy this is the best time to make use of every piece of quality career advice you can. Career coaching can make all the difference at a time when your emotions are likely to be running high; you may have been in your job for many years and if this is the case you would be forgiven for feeling as if there is no future for you in the current job market.

But many people end up looking back and realising that their redundancy was a good thing in the long run. That’s not to say that it wasn’t stressful or upsetting at the time, but there is no doubt that if you get the right help and support when you need it you will be able to face your future with more knowledge and confidence.

It’s also a good time to think about whether you want to stay in the same career and progress to a different company, or if you would prefer to opt for a complete career change. Many people find career coaching can help them to assess the possibilities and make an informed decision on whether their current skills could be put to better use elsewhere.

If you do decide to opt for a career change you may find you need to obtain some fresh qualifications or training that will give you a better chance of getting the job you want. Proper career planning can also identify other possibilities such as self employment – perhaps even using the years of experience you have already gained in the job you are about to leave. Many people use some of their redundancy money to set up a business which enables them to be true to themselves as well as bring in an income which comes from creating something that is truly theirs.

Whatever you decide to do, it is vital that you get the help and advice you need as soon as you know that redundancy is on the cards. If you can do this you will be able to move forwards with much more confidence.

The website of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development publishes a quarterly review of the labour market, which gives details of the outlook for redundancy among other factors, and it can be accessed at their website at http://www.cipd.co.uk.

© Copyright Hannah McNamara 2008

Hannah McNamara is a Career Coach with a background in Marketing, based in London. She has been providing Career Coaching in London for almost 4 years and has a client base made up of private individuals, large organisations and SME businesses.

Career Coaching: Ambition – Constructive or Destructive?

Hannah McNamara from HRM Coaching in London explores whether ambition is really such a good thing and whether career coaching can help.

We all recognise that achieving a work life balance isn’t always as easy as it sounds. Most of us want to do well in our careers, moving up the ladder and taking on more responsibilities as we go. We soon discover that leadership and management skills can take us a long way, and so it is natural to want to develop them and our careers as well, whether they are in the public sector or the private sector.

There is certainly nothing wrong with a bit of ambition – if none of us had any then most of the luxuries we have and developments we have made in the world wouldn’t be here today. But when does ambition turn from being constructive and rear its ugly head as a destructive mechanism? Perhaps more importantly, how can we tell before we get to the tipping point?

Career coaching is still gaining ground in the public and private sectors, and a career coach can certainly help you to take a good look at your career to see whether any changes need to be made. It is quite often the fact that an outsider can tell whether your ambition is going too far, long before you reach that point of recognition yourself. As in so many other situations in life, we are often the last ones to see there is a problem – until it is almost too late to solve it.

Having a well constructed personal development plan is a good way to keep track of how your work performance is shaping up. Your ambitions can help you to identify well targeted work goals to achieve, without creating too many to be able to keep tabs on them all at the same time.

It’s also wise to keep a well rounded view of your lifestyle in place at all times. Destructive ambitions which take over your life are very often more likely to happen when you don’t have many interests in your personal life, and your work life is therefore allowed to spill over and fill the gaps.

While a career coach can certainly discuss your dreams and ambitions with you, they can also help you to maintain a more even keel, concentrating on your personal development plan as well as keeping an eye on how your personal interests are being attended to. If you have a good work life balance in place, then your ambitions will almost always be constructive, since you will have personal interests that you won’t be willing to compromise on.

If you are currently dangerously near to having destructive ambitions, bear in mind that it will take some time to redress the balance back in your favour. Once you have started taking productive steps to do just that, you will find it is very easy to regain it given time.

© Copyright Hannah McNamara 2008

Career Coaching in London

For some time, we have been providing Career Coaching for our clients in London. When people are looking for a new job, they aren’t always as confident as they could be in interviews.

We have developed a number of packages to suit people at different stages in their career. These are listed below:

• Career Coaching Home Page – an introduction to Career Coaching
• Intensive Coaching Session – suitable for interview preparation
• Career Review Package – 6 session package on career
• Career Overhaul Package – 10 session package on career
• Bespoke Coaching – suitable for senior executives
• Talent Management – in-house career development and outplacement coaching
• How Coaching Packages Work
• Success Stories – including case studies
• E-book on Career Coaching – download free
• Meet the Team – profiles of our career coaching team

Please contact us on 020 7939 9910 for more information and a no obligation discussion of your circumstances.

The benefits of using a Career Coach

Hannah McNamara from HRM Coaching in London provides career coaching for Marketing professionals and has a team of coaches from a variety of background who offer coaching for accountants, lawyers and IT professionals. Hannah explains more about career coaching:

If you feel as if you are at a crossroads in your career and you are not sure which way to turn, you could benefit from consulting a career coach to help you make your decisions.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development goes into great length about the benefits of coaching on its website, http://www.cipd.co.uk, exploring the impact it has on the lives of those who decide to give it a go.

Most people have heard about career coaching but it is generally assumed that it is reserved only for management. However this is far from being the truth. Coaching has become a regular activity in over half of businesses, and there are distinct benefits to making it available to the workforce as a whole. Some businesses have a dedicated coach on hand whenever they are needed, while others use senior members of staff to provide a listening ear and to act as a sounding board for those who have issues that need to be discussed.

While group coaching is a possibility, many people are uncomfortable about discussing any issues they may have within the context of a group meeting. That is why individual career coaching is often taken advantage of by more people.

Simply providing access to a career coach can help the productivity of your business enormously. One of the ideas behind coaching is that it helps to identify problem areas and suggest solutions for the person in question to make improvements. The whole process always begins with the client however, and not the coach – the client may have a desire to get ahead at work but is unsure of how to do it. In this case the coach will help the client identify ways to develop their skills and talents, to better themselves and their outlook as well.

Allowing the staff to have access to coaching services can improve the whole outlook of a business. It can also encourage better communication between managers and staff, and lead to more productivity as a result.

Career coaching is about much more than just figuring out what you want to do with your career next. It’s not just about working out your next career move. It has a real and lasting value in getting the most out of the job role you have now.

Small wonder then that so many businesses are latching on to the possibilities and advantages it offers.

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