My first time: Reputation management in 2002
During 2002 I went for a job interview at the Ministry of Defence office in Whitehall (London). The position was a rocket scientist (no joke, I’ve got a degree in Astro Physics) in charge of analysing photos of Russian & Iraqi missiles to see what sort of manoeuvres they were capable of and whether they could outrun the RAF planes.
Anyway, during the interview the government guys were asking lots of security questions and had been searching for me on Google. Being a university student there were several college web pages including details of drunken nights out and they questioned me in all seriousness on every single page brought up on Google.
Needless to say I didn’t get the job and spent the next couple of weeks at uni removing all the dubious web pages in preparation for my next interview.
Reputation management isn’t as new as most people think, this interview was 5 years ago when Google was only just becoming well known and yet the issues were exactly the same as today.
When was your first experience in reputation management? (comment below or write a story on your blog and I will link to it)
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Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Branded3, a Leeds SEO & Digital Agency specialising in SEO, Web Design, Development & Social Media.
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It’s kind of on topic, sort of. I wrote about reputation management (http://www.simplehelp.net/2007/07/14/how-to-reclaim-your-name-online/) and now that article (or parts of it) is going to appear in a print magazine at the end of Oct. Which marks the first time I’ve been published in that format (magazine – I don’t think hardware manuals totally count towards being a “published author”). So writing about reputation management, might have helped improve my reputation as a writer.
I only said it was kind of on topic