A Senior's Thoughts: e-personality

Last week, I shared my attempt to reduce my spending. That is something I’ve been continually working on, although coming back to Auburn to an apartment with no food and new warm weather didn’t make it easy. This week, however, I’ll be focusing on monitoring my e-personality. Have you ever thought about this? We’ve all heard that you only get one first impression, but have you ever thought that your first impression could be on Facebook or Twitter? Think about it. If you tweet something that is retweeted, chances are someone you do not know now knows your name and associates your name with something you said using 140 characters or less.

I began the monitoring process by Googling my name: Paige Robinson. On the first page of websites, the only two things that showed up were my LinkedIn profile and the website I created for a class. While, I’d like to appear more upon that Google search, two isn’t bad. When I Googled: Paige Robinson Auburn, I got much more interesting results. Everything on the first page was me. It was videos I did for a class, articles and my resume. Various articles, websites and videos kept occurring even up to the third page. These were all good things because they market my skills: video production, editing, feature and news writing and social media.

Next I analyzed my social media accounts. I’ve done this before and regularly update them, but I still took the time to check them out. I had no profanity or bad pictures on my sites. I did have some high school yearbook invitations on my home page on Facebook, but I promptly deleted them.

The scary thing now is Facebook’s timeline. If you’re like me and didn’t start college off on the best foot, you have to go back to 2008 and clean everything up. This is one thing I did learn from this experience. Everything you post on a social media site is present. Luckily, you can delete photos from your site, but you have to take the time to really go through it. That is one thing I am doing now and plan to continue. It’s embarrassing to see what I posted as a high school senior, and I definitely don’t want a future employer to see that!

If you have never monitored your e-personality here are my recommendations:

1. Google yourself. Make needed changes based on those results.
2. Review your tweets. Do they have profanity? Do they allude to inappropriate topics? If so, delete them.
3. Look at your Facebook pictures. Do they have alcoholic beverages, cigarettes, drugs or profanity in them? If so, delete them.
4. Look at posts on your Facebook wall, groups you’re involved in and your recent activity. Are they alluding to crude subjects? If so, delete them.
5. Complete your LinkedIn profile. Why have a profile if it doesn’t adequately show your skills? Make sure each division is filled out to the fullest.

*Maybe you’re wondering what to do with pictures or posts regarding alcoholic beverages if you are 21 or older. My advice is just delete them. Better safe than sorry. What if your boss is extremely conservative? Is that something you would want him or her to see? Remember this could be your first impression; just take them down.

Paige Robinson '12
Career Center Intern