Google You.

Google yourself. Go ahead. I’ll wait. It’s not an act of vanity, it’s a key job searching technique. What do you see? Hopefully what comes up contributes to the narrative you will convey in the interview. Are you an associate who is involved in several organizations or are your college party pictures from Facebook showing up? Are you the rainmaking attorney who is constantly pounding the pavement for clients or are you completely invisible on the internet? Whatever you see, tells a story to a potential employer (and potential clients for that matter). If the story isn’t what you plan to discuss in an interview, then you have to account for the differences. The time to create that plan is NOW and not when you are in the middle of an interview.

As we know, the problem is that you can’t just call up Google and ask to edit the search results. Sure you can take steps to organically change the results, but that takes time. Since you likely don’t have that kind of time, you have to understand everything that an employer can see and be prepared to discuss them if it gets brought up in the interview. This can include some stressful topics – anything that is a public record is something that can (and sometimes does) come up in an interview. We are seeing more and more employers search public records to get a fuller picture of a person, especially now that in-person interviews are less common.

Clearly you can’t undo the past, but you need to be prepared to discuss those items and take ownership (and show how things have changed for you). Showing an employer that you understand your past and can speak clearly about it is a good thing. If the results are positive, you can amplify them. If the narrative is not positive, you can explain them. Either way, knowing what an employer may turn up gives you a way to be as prepared as possible in an interview – and that’s worth all the effort!