Russell Conwell Center Facilitator: Holly Drutarovsky, Academic Coach

How you present yourself online can literally make or break your professional career. If you do not understand how to represent yourself virtually, your competition who knows how to strategically represent themselves online will get the job before you, even if you are both equally qualified. Even in college, you are expected to act as a young professional, because others are looking at you right now as a potential employee! This means you must be aware of your virtual presentation of yourself starting NOW.

These sites portray who you are to the rest of the online world. Every time you post something, be aware of the image you are creating of yourself. Whether good or bad, you are sending a message of who you are and you want it to be good! Do not post photos of yourself and your friends with your red solo cups - this could be a HUGE turn off to potential employers for internships and future jobs. Keep your photos classy. Post your successes and achievements; you can never go wrong with those.

Have you heard of the teenage girl who recently made an extremely disrespectful comment about President Obama? She tweeted something that seemingly threatened the President. She likely did not truly mean what she said, but she is now being investigated by the Secret Service. Because of one careless tweet, this young woman has created a reputation and image that will hurt her future job and school pursuits. This information will also be easily available to the public for the rest of her life (imagine what her children will think about it)! Check out this article to read more about the story: 08-wir-ohio-obama-tweet-assassination-teenager-investigation.html 08-wir-ohio-obama-tweet-assassination-teenager-investigation.html

A recent study looked at the statistics of employers who look at potential employee’s Social Networking pages during the hiring process. They found that 91% of employers DO look at candidates’ pages! This means that you are almost guaranteed to be screened through your personal online social media accounts prior to even being considered for the job! Here is a website to check out “Job Screening with Social Networks” to see what exactly employers are looking at when they find your pages: networks-to-screen-candidates-infographic/ networks-to-screen-candidates-infographic/

If you are worried about what you did to present yourself in the past affecting you now, do not worry! Delete, un-like, or un-tag yourself from images, posts, or pages that could be considered rude, vulgar, inappropriate, or immature. Change your settings so that you are not able to be searched. Change your privacy settings so that anyone you do not want investigating your personal life is unable to see what you do online.

This is a VITAL skill for anyone who is interested in any kind of professional career (meaning YOU)! You should understand etiquette both now during your college career, and later when you are applying for jobs and have a job where you need to interact with your colleagues and supervisors.

1.Use the Subject Line to write a few words that will give the receiver an idea of what your entails. 2.Include in the Body of your A line greeting the person you are ing. Your name and any relevant information about yourself the person will need (if it is a professor or someone that you do not regularly , this is crucial)! A concise description of why you are ing them (include why you need to talk to them, any questions you might have, and any other relevant information pertaining to the reason you are ing them). A closing line (using a ‘goodbye’ or ‘thank you’ statement followed by your name) Ex. “Best, Name”, “Thank you for your time, Name”, etc.

Spellcheck! Do NOT use “texting language”, such as LOL, BTW, R, U, etc. Write out your words, don’t EVER use LOL or anything similar. Keep it concise – make sure to keep it short and to the point without excluding relevant information. Save the jokes for when you meet with someone in-person It can be extremely difficult to tell when someone is joking when you are not face to face, and you certainly do not want to offend anyone or come off as rude in an ! Eliminate the “smileys” It can become annoying and unprofessional when you use them. Capitalize proper nouns and beginnings of sentences, and end sentences with a punctuation mark. Also, NO run-on sentences.

If you decide to send out a mass to a class you are in… MAKE SURE to remember all of your points the FIRST time. Include the CLASS NAME somewhere in the . Be specific! DO NOT abuse this, and use it as a LAST RESOURCE! Going to your professor’s office hours is much more beneficial!!! If you receive a mass , only reply to the person who sent it (unless it is important for the whole group to know about what you are saying).

When you are text messaging a peer, professor, co-worker, employer, or anyone that you do not know extremely well, follow the same guidelines from the previous slide on what to remember when ing. MAKE SURE you are absolutely certain that someone is okay with receiving text messages before you text them Some people find it very unprofessional and rude if you text them when they specifically asked or told you to call them. If you are unsure, calling is always the best option!

The same rules apply here as they do to ing and text messaging. If there is a chat room session, do not keep sending short 1-5 word responses! It can get annoying really quickly. Instead, try to gather all of your thoughts before hitting the send button.

Not everyone is who they say they are! But you aren’t in Junior High, so how does this apply to you? Saying things that could potentially get you in trouble will be easily accessible to others looking to get you in trouble. This means you should be VERY aware of what you are saying and the potential risks of saying something.

You do not want anything negative coming up with a simple search engine like Google. Google is such an accessible way to find out more about a person, that it is almost certain your potential employers or anyone wishing to know more about you will Google you! For Example: If you Google yourself and your Linkedin account page along with a recent scholarship you won show up, this is great! You are presented as a young professional with aspirations and motivation If you Google yourself and pictures from last month’s party come up, you should do everything possible to get them taken off Google. In order to get a negative result off Google, Google how to un-Google yourself.

In general, you CANNOT take it back! This means that if you write, post, text, or comment on something online you really need to be okay with what you said. You also need to be aware of how this might affect you and others who have the same and dissimilar opinions. Be responsible, ALWAYS! If you do not behave appropriately online, you will not be respected by the people who matter. Of course, your friends might think you are cool, but that potential employer will definitely not. You may even regret it in the near future among friends and family!