Nothing is private if you put it online.

It’s been exactly 362 days since I was laid off and, in that year, I’ve learned a lot about myself personally and professionally. I’ve figured out what I don’t want to do with my life (work in the music industry), what I do want to do with my life (work for a progressive nonprofit communications firm), and how to get there (work as hard as I possibly can). To get there, I have to do certain things.

Hard work is the number one priority. As soon as I got laid off, the first thing I did (after sulking for a week and watching all four seasons of Battlestar Galactica) was apply for jobs and internships. Then, I built myself an online brand. That brand, now updated to what you see today, took three months to develop and become fruitful.

Never once did I consider removing my name from Facebook or canceling my Twitter account – I shouldn’t be afraid of these forums. I know they can never truly be hidden on the internet, but I can control what people find out about me by limiting the things I put online. Instead, I used Facebook and Twitter, in addition to a blog, to leverage my social media experience into a job.

No, not everyone wants to go into social media marketing for nonprofits. But don’t try to pretend that you’re not online when you really are.

I came across this article today in which people (probably around my age) were altering their social media lives during their job search. One interviewee stated that he changed his name on Facebook so that he was unsearchable only to discover that you can search for people via email addresses. He’s since changed his name back.

He later claims that Facebook is a private space and that “too many people take pictures of you. [He] didn’t want to go through and ‘untag’ all of them.”

So, you want a job, but you’re too lazy to go in and untag photos of yourself? That’s not a good sign, sir.

I passed along the article and my boss and I shared a few quick emails about our initial reactions to the article:

Me: I find it unbelievable that they’re talking about changing their names on Facebook so they don’t come up in searches, but they still use their real names to be quoted in an article on CNN.com.

My boss: My only surprise would be to learn that this is just now starting to happen, but maybe that’s because I’m from a generation that doesn’t think exposing every aspect of my life and daily doings online is normal. Could it really be true that there are youngsters out there who are just now realizing that their online profiles could hurt them in the eyes of employers (and beyond)?

We both took particular exception to two quotes:

“There’s nothing illegal or too ridiculous in the photos … but people don’t take pictures of people studying or doing school work. They take pictures of people at parties and doing silly things.”

Her response: …but people ALSO take pictures of other people traveling overseas and broadening their horizons; attending cultural events; partaking in healthy outdoor activities; sharing holidays with the family; etc. etc. There’s a whole world of wholesome, employer-friendly photo topics out there.

I’d never actually thought about it like this, but she’s completely right. There are no pictures of me anywhere on the internet of me being drunk or dressed inappropriately… mostly because I don’t do those things, but if I did, I’d have the good sense not to publish them online where they can be shared, downloaded, and indexed by billions of people whether I know them or not.

“Such prying into his online life makes Gawel uncomfortable.”

My response: As someone who works in social media, it’s perplexing that people don’t understand that your profile is out there for everyone to read or search for, unless you’re very familiar with privacy settings. Even then, that doesn’t stop someone else from reposting what you write into a public forum. It’s a page on the internet. How could you stop someone from seeing it?

I, too, have skeletons in my internet persona closet. In my senior year of college, a roommate and I got into a verbal argument which resulted in her physically harming me. Instead of taking issue with the University (they punished both of us), she took to her LiveJournal and spread damaging lies about me… using my full name. Knowing I couldn’t go to her and ask her to remove it, I made a note of this blemish in interviews and cover letters if I thought the hiring managers might search for me. I did so for a year or two until it no longer appeared in the top Google search results for my name.

As someone who got a job by bolstering my social media presence instead of hiding inappropriate photos of myself, here are some tips (whether you want them or not) about what you should – or should not – do when looking for a job:

• Don’t complain about other people in your status updates. If you absolutely need to vent your frustrations, don’t use their real name or allude to who you might be talking about.
• Don’t post pictures of other people and mock them online. I don’t think I need to describe this further.
• Don’t do something in view of cameras that you wouldn’t do in front of your current/potential boss. You may not be Michael Phelps, but someone will find these embarrassing photos some day and it will come back to bite you.
• Connect with people who do what you want to do. Easy enough, right? I wanted to go into nonprofit communications, so I followed the top nonprofit communications experts on Twitter and started retweeting them, communicating with them, and following their blogs. They may not know who I am, but I learned valuable lessons from them and kept my online persona clean.

What are some of your social media persona tips?