Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
The Internet

Online Nicknames Google better than Real? 308

Posted by CmdrTaco from the never-really-thought-about-that dept.
An anonymous reader writes "I was recently laid off, and during several of the interviews looking for a new job as a mid level IT manager, I was asked "So, I can just Google your name and find some of your work?" The answer is "yes", but searching for my name doesn't really bring up many results compared to searching for my online nickname which I have been using for about a decade. I am very tempted just to put that nickname on my resume. Is the professional, albeit technical, world ready for this step? Where should I put it? At the top or somewhere in the body?" And the other problem- how hard will it be to get a job when your nickname is something ridiculous. Boy I wish I would have thought of that in 95 ;)
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Online Nicknames Google better than Real? More

Online Nicknames Google better than Real?

Comments Filter:

  • yeah (Score:5, Funny)

    by stoolpigeon ( 454276 ) * <bittercode@gmail> on Saturday November 24, 2007 @09:50AM (#21462081) Homepage Journal
    i tried to get a position with the mafia - and i couldn't figure out why it didn't work out. it's all clear now.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      - Now, what the fuck is his name?
      - Ghost Dog.
      - What?
      - Ghost Dog.
      - Ghost Dog?
      - He said Ghost Dog!
      - He calls himself Ghost Dog.
      - A lot of these black guys, gangster type guys, they all got names like that.
      - Is that true?
      - He means like the rappers.
      - The rappers got names like that -- Snoop Doggy Dogg, Ice Cube, Q-Tip, Method Man. My favourite was always Flavor Flav from Public Enemy.
      - He got the funky fresh fly flava.
      - "Live lyrics from the bank of reality. I kick da flyest dope manoeuvre technicality, to a

  • They followed my email address (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bandman ( 86149 ) <bandmanNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Saturday November 24, 2007 @09:54AM (#21462103) Homepage
    My current employer googled my email address, found my LiveJournal and read the previous two years or so of what I'd been writing.

    It actually helped them decide to choose me, since there are lots of questions you can't ask in an interview, but reading a LJ gives a more accurate representation of a person, anyway.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by forgotten_my_nick ( 802929 )
      Your much too honest. Any serious geek would create a fake blog/live journal and fill it up with stuff they think the employer would want to hear.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Dun Malg ( 230075 )

        Your much too honest.

        His much too honest? What about his much too honest?

        Any serious geek would create a fake blog/live journal and fill it up with stuff they think the employer would want to hear.

        Anyone capable of filling a livejournal page with enough quality content to make it look and read in a believable manner is likely talented and hardworking enough that the content might as well be real. Seriously, do you think that the kind of average loser that points to a fake livejoural page is going to be capable of filling it with enough plausible content to get away with it? No, it's going to be filled with thinly veiled "I am so awesome" posts, wi

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by GuldKalle ( 1065310 )
          Plus, I suspect it's kinda hard to fake dates in there, so you'd have to plan for this years in advance. Whatever job is worth that, I want it.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Misanthropy ( 31291 )
      This is the reason I use separate business and personal emails.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by celardore ( 844933 )
        Me too. I have a dozen email addresses, and they all filter down into the same gmail account.

        Want to employ me? email@myrealname.com
        Know me on the net? email@onlinename.net
        Interested in a project I've worked on? email@projectname.com

        I think this is one of the advantages of owning a few domains and having a catch-all. My email address is whatever I want it to be @domain.com. So maybe for myspace, I would use myspace@celardore.net, facebook facebook@celardore.net, etc etc. At least I can look a

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Joebert ( 946227 )

        This is the reason I use separate business and personal emails.

        Same here, it used to be such a pain in the ass when bank managers would ask me if I knew anything about "cr3d17_h4ck3r@h4x0rs.com".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hacker ( 14635 )

      "...interview, but reading a LJ gives a more accurate representation of a person, anyway."

      HAHAHAhahAHAHHA... thanks for the great laugh on a Saturday morning.

  • At least porn doesn't pop up when you google (Score:5, Funny)

    by antifoidulus ( 807088 ) on Saturday November 24, 2007 @09:56AM (#21462117) Homepage Journal
    your name. I happen to have the last name that is the same as the stage name of a popular porn actress, and my first and middle name happen to coincide with the first and last name of a male porn star she frequently stars with. So 90%+ of the stuff that comes up when you search for my name on google is porn......

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by eggnoglatte ( 1047660 )
      Clearly you should sue google for damages ;-)

      But on a more serious note, wouldn't it be great if one of the search engines finally did the firstname, lastname thing correctly? It can't be that difficult to figure that one out in a way that it is correct most of the time.

      • Searching names on google & similar sites (Score:5, Informative)

        by djh101010 ( 656795 ) * on Saturday November 24, 2007 @01:40PM (#21463695) Homepage Journal

        But on a more serious note, wouldn't it be great if one of the search engines finally did the firstname, lastname thing correctly? It can't be that difficult to figure that one out in a way that it is correct most of the time.
        You mean, like searching for "Firstname Lastname" (with the quotes)? Works for me... There's nothing magic about that phrase being a name, it's just two words that you want to look for in a specific order but together. Works just like "SCSI bus adapter" or anything else. Just tested with my dad's name, someone with limited web presence. Just with Firstname Lastname, 295,000 hits. With quotes, 90, most of them him, mostly webpages and newsletters from groups he belongs to. So it seems to work pretty well that way. Very useful in genealogy searches, by the way.

        • Re:Searching names on google & similar sites (Score:4, Insightful)

          by eggnoglatte ( 1047660 ) on Saturday November 24, 2007 @04:38PM (#21465049)
          That works alright, except for all the pages it is missing. What about pages where they have your initials rather than your full first name? Or pages with middle initials vs. without? Or maybe you are searching for a list, and the format is actually "Lastname, Firstname".

          For added bonus, a people search mode could expand semantic information. For example, if there is a page with the text "Firstname Lastname (somebody@google.com)", the search engine know knows one of the email addresses of that person, and can include it in the search, so you find pages with only the email address rather than the name. Or if there is a personal home page on slashdot (or facebook etc.), which lists both real name and handle, all slashdot postings (facebook entries etc) should be included.

          You can do this kind of stuff manually today, but it takes a lot of time and effort.

          Oh, and before somebody complains about privacy: this is all very public info already. Somebody who knows what they are doing can already collect that data in a hour or two.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Fuzzums ( 250400 )
      I thought 90% or more of the internet was porn.

    • Sue your parents (Score:5, Funny)

      by InvisblePinkUnicorn ( 1126837 ) on Saturday November 24, 2007 @11:20AM (#21462537)
      What the hell were your parents thinking naming you Rock Hardon Beaver?!

      Especially when their last name is Goldstein...
    • Peter North Jameson, is that you?!?!

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by noidentity ( 188756 )
      Isn't that a good thing, in a way? Searches for dirt on you get drowned out by these more commonly referenced people.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by eulernet ( 1132389 )
      Let me guess... Dick Tracy ?
  • My original online nick was Basilita, which immediately had men hitting on me, so it rapidly changed to Downes, my last name, but an IRC netsplit kept having me colliding with myself, so I shortened it to Down. Then the band Down came out, and all of their fanboys kept asking if I was part of "the band" and at the same time I was starting help with Enoch Linux (now Gentoo) and doing a lot of tinkering with AMIX and OpenBSD so I appended Linux into my name, hence, Downix.

    And I jst googled myself. Only 997

    • Re:Glad I thought ahead. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by TobyRush ( 957946 ) on Saturday November 24, 2007 @10:55AM (#21462401) Homepage

      I've got a reasonably unique name, and I decided a while back that using it as my online name is a good way to keep myself honest and avoiding the temptation to do something stupid.

      I say "reasonably unique," of course... there is actually another person I know of with my same first and last name; he's the CEO of an RFID company in Kansas. I've always thought of contacting him, but I was actually born in Kansas (moved away when I was 3) and there's that tiny fear of finding out that he's me.

  • You got asked if they could google? I didn't. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I went to a job interview and got asked questions that could only have come from a google search. Very dangerous given that my name is relatively common and there is no clear way to know how much they read and attributed to me really was written by me. How much di they read that wasn't brought up in the interview for me to confirm or refute?

  • Anonymous Reader? (Score:5, Funny)

    by kfaroo ( 719510 ) on Saturday November 24, 2007 @10:09AM (#21462179)
    You know CmdrTaco, this reminds me of the time I had to go to the doctor to seek advice about a "friend" who got crabs.
  • I do a pretty good job, mostly, of keeping what I do in my off-hours seperate from what I do during work hours. About the only thing that might come up if they searched for my name would be some tech notes, and possibly some interaction with vendors on bug submissions and fixes. But even the interaction with vendors tends to be layered under NDAs, so (ideally) wouldn't be available to just anyone anyway.

    In my opinion, searching for a name is likely to be a waste of time. There's not a guarantee you'll c

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )
      Well, in this case the submitter clearly thinks there are things he's done under a pseudonym that he *wants* potential employers to find. Personally, I wouldn't be that concerned with the professionalism of putting your nickname on the resume, like "Contributed to open source projects $foo, $bar under screen name $nick", but rather what you'll really be giving access to. If your nickname is reasonably creative and unique, you may end up connecting yourself to a lot of things that you probably thought was ra
  • And I decided that writing it as 'DiSKiLLeR' was cool, once upon a time, some 14 years ago :(
    • And I thought i'd add....:

      I really am embarassed by this nickname now, and wish i could change it, but its used in SO many damn places, and its my main domainname, and its my email address everywhere, and its embarassing when people ask for my email address on the phone or whatever, like when i'm applying for jobs.... oh man.

      What was I thinking back in 94??
  • You can see my online nick anywhere on this site or in google, and sure it links back to my name if you give a shit. So what that my online persona has achieved quite a bit in the last decade, it still isn't something to present your future employers with, no one except a hacker or amateur /.er deserves to know what my thoughts have been for 10+ years. My online persona is my personal life, and not my professional life. I'd recommend only exposing the professional side of your online activities and leave th

  • Survey says... NOWHERE! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pla ( 258480 ) on Saturday November 24, 2007 @10:21AM (#21462235) Journal
    I am very tempted just to put that nickname on my resume. Is the professional, albeit technical, world ready for this step?

    The professional world can't stand when your real life and their little toy world-of-whoredom intersect in messy ways. When this happens, you hear about people fired for sexual harassment over a coworker uninvitedly reading your personal website or blog.

    So, where should you list your online handle(s) on your resume? Nowhere! Thus the whole point of using a handle in the first place... Only an idiot would pretend it gives us true anonymity, but to a casual search for info on you, the two worlds will maintain some degree of separation. You want that effect.


    Remember that once you make it to an actual interview, employers don't look for reasons to hire you, they look for reasons not to hire you. Think of it like a driving test where you start with 100 and can only go down... The less you do outside the scope of the test, the better. At your driving exam, did you ask to stop at the local head-shop to pick up some filters?


    If you really feel the need to provide some online persona for an employer, make a new one. Create a cute little profile on all the big social networking sites, and post carefully censored historical details of your life.

    • If you really feel the need to provide some online persona for an employer, make a new one. Create a cute little profile on all the big social networking sites, and post carefully censored historical details of your life.

      you mean something like the reason you're looking for work?

      So there I was, at the party and my girlfriend was talking to, I think it was Jessica Alba, when these couple of guys came over and we talked about some companym, IBM I think it was, and I kept looking over and I remember Jessica had really wide eyes and these guys were saying how great something would be, and then they offered me the post of chairman of IBM, , but my gf came over and asked if we could give Jessica a lift home, and I thought if she [wikiquote.org]

  • Yeah but what if... (Score:5, Funny)

    by w3c.org ( 1039484 ) on Saturday November 24, 2007 @10:24AM (#21462253) Homepage
    your nickname is, say, quite common ?

  • Google turned me down (Score:5, Funny)

    by gEvil (beta) ( 945888 ) on Saturday November 24, 2007 @10:27AM (#21462261)
    I interviewed with Google once, but for some reason they turned me down...
  • Been on the other side of the table lately and some of the candidates clearly Googled me. Some even mentioned it.

    For myself, it felt a bit strange. But I have to admit, I'd do it if I'd be going to an interview. But, contrairy to what I experience, I'd never reveal the fact I looked up on somebody.

    What is your opinion? Is it ok to do and indicate you did? Does it show you are prepared?
  • ... are the better ones for that, maybe boring, and surely depends on how common is your name/surname. My nick, mail address (without the @gmail.com) and even my real life name (ok, initial of name+surname) coincide, even with different mail providers in the past, so giving your name is giving your nickname.

    And of course, different people could use your nickname across different communities. So giving your nickname you could end giving the wrong references, if some of the hits points to something you dont l

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday November 24, 2007 @10:37AM (#21462305)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Not only is someone able to find out about you, but of what others think of you along with a ton of other information you may not even be aware of as being accessible via the internet.

    There is a word..... Libel.... and now if you know you did not get the job you can pursue a legal course against ..... ????

    Perhaps that is something worth mentioning to any potential employer.
    Perhaps its also worth mentioning or understanding if you are a potential employer.

    • Not only is someone able to find out about you, but of what others think of you along with a ton of other information you may not even be aware of as being accessible via the internet.

      As bad as it might be to not get a job, especially if you really need one now, I think it would be even worse to work for a firm that used unsubstantiated, uncorroborated online data about its potential employees to make hiring decisions. That might indicate that they make other decisions similarly. You cite the possibili

  • Early usenet is a killer (Score:5, Insightful)

    by weave ( 48069 ) on Saturday November 24, 2007 @10:49AM (#21462359) Journal

    Back in the early 90s usenet was "safe" because everyone knew that it got expired after a week or two. We all used our real names and email addresses too. Then someone found some old backup tapes 10 years later and handed them over to Google.

    A friend of mine was quite a good troll back then, but now it haunts him due to his unique name. He's written Google and gotten them to delete his posts, but they won't delete other people's posts that quote him, so he's a bit screwed. I advised him to start posting lots of technical stuff to hopefully flood out the bad crap, and then write off the rest as youthful indiscretion.

    Another friend who is now in his 40s got busted and convicted for dealing drugs when he was a teenager and spent a few years in jail. He's absolutely reformed now and eventually got a pardon from the governor of the state he was convicted in. He has no trouble getting a tech job these days -- except for banks. He doesn't even bother applying there.

    Also, doing drugs won't stop you from being President these days, saying the wrong thing 20 years ago will.

    Moral of the story, do drugs, don't talk shit on the net.

    (Gawd, this tongue-in-cheek post is going to come back to haunt me someday I bet...)

    • Re:Early usenet is a killer (Score:5, Informative)

      by Chapter80 ( 926879 ) on Saturday November 24, 2007 @11:20AM (#21462539)

      Also, doing drugs won't stop you from being President these days, saying the wrong thing 20 years ago will.
      Yeah, and funny thing, Slashdot-savvy college kids are willingly handing over their college term papers to services that archive them FOREVER, and without protest. You guys should be expressing outrage at this, like those high school kids in McLean Virginia who go to trial in January! [dontturnitin.com]
    • Back in the early 90s usenet was "safe" because everyone knew that it got expired after a week or two. We all used our real names and email addresses too. Then someone found some old backup tapes 10 years later and handed them over to Google. ...

      This is an interesting side-effect of the recording nature of internet conversations. It's not that people somehow have become more rotten because of the internet, it's just that a rotten remark used to be carried only by the wind, and now it's carried by hard drive

  • Worked great for me! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 24, 2007 @10:49AM (#21462363)
    Because of my internet picture, I now have a six figure job at a medical school. I work in the proctology department as live model for the students.

    Sincerely,

    The Goatse guy

  • i win. but fortunately my real name os a tongue twister, so googling it yields an almost unique result.

  • this can only count against you (Score:4, Interesting)

    by petes_PoV ( 912422 ) on Saturday November 24, 2007 @10:53AM (#21462391)
    If you publish online information about your current (or past) job, that tells any future employers a lot about your sense of discretion and how you treat information that may not be overtly confidential, but certainly has no place in a public forum. Certainly the interviewer would be less than happy to find information about their company (or even this interview) on your next blog entry.

    If you simply can't hold it in, at least make sure that no individuals or organisations can be identified.

    On a resume, or in an interview, the potential employer is interested in what you can do for them, not your personal blog or your views on personal/irrelevant topics (unless they would be incompatible with the position you are interviewing for).

    As a consequence, I can see almost no situations where an employee can write about their current or past work in a way that will not compromise their future employment prospects - leave online links out of your CV

  • How about Googling for something like John Smith or John Jones (of course, there's Jim Jones, which will return some interesting historic references)? I doubt very much that any potential employer will be able to find references to your work amongst all the thousands of returns that are *not* you. So, unless you have a relatively unique name, Google isn't going to help.

    As for discovering your on-line nickname, I'm sure the NSA or the FBI will happily provide the service (if they don't already).

    • How about Googling for something like John Smith or John Jones (of course, there's Jim Jones, which will return some interesting historic references)? I doubt very much that any potential employer will be able to find references to your work amongst all the thousands of returns that are *not* you. So, unless you have a relatively unique name, Google isn't going to help.

      Yep, that's the situation I'm in. My real name is very common, and is shared by a celebrity to boot. (He spells it differently, but a

  • So much for my career aspirations at the LAPD...

  • Damn English (Score:5, Funny)

    by Poromenos1 ( 830658 ) on Saturday November 24, 2007 @11:15AM (#21462511) Homepage
    How do you parse the title, when almost each word could either be a verb or a noun? :( And if "Google" is a verb there, why is it capitalized? The answers to these questions still elude me, after minutes of staring at it.

  • ClaimID (Score:4, Informative)

    by SocializedSoftware ( 1193555 ) on Saturday November 24, 2007 @11:17AM (#21462525) Homepage
    I use ClaimID [claimid.com] to verify what belongs to me online. It's free and let's you add those things online that you authored and also note which items don't belong to you. You can then give your ClaimID URL and annotate your claimed URLs to create an online resume that presents yourself in a more polished way to a potential employer.
  • How do you prove that the alias that you list is 100% unique? While I know that my alias is unique on /., its very possible that there's someone out there that uses the same alias for blogs/usenet/WoW/Forums etc. Since there's no internationally registration of an alias, you'd have a tough time proving that HockeyPuck is me while the kiddiep0rn watching HockeyPuck(2) is not.

  • I just googled my username [google.com]. I use this username quite often, too.
    There is only one entry that isn't me. See if you can guess which one it is.
  • 1) I long ago divided my personal/hobby posts from my professional presence on the Internet. I did this when an interviewer asked for my blog address, and I realized I had just posted about how great microwavable juice concentrate was. I had been "blogging" using some Slash wannabe code I wrote myself since before the term "blog" had been coined, so I had a lot of stuff up.

    I keep two blogs, use two different emails, etc. Sure, it wouldn't take much work to connect the two, but it provides some insulation be
  • My real name is very common. Over 1 million hits, and none of them on the first few pages are me. I tried my online nickname. Over 2 million hits, 1 of them on the first page is me. wk2 is my online nickname initials.

    One of the reasons I chose a common online nickname is because it is cool, and great minds think alike. The other reason is because I WANT to remain anonymous. If an employer wants to research me, they will have to ask for help. They can ask me for a starting point, and for links to my work. I
  • I got my nickname (see user ID) many years ago. It came from this bizarre Japanese documentary about ducks in downtown Tokyo. I still have no idea how it got attached to ME (I am neither duck-like, nor small), but it somehow did. It wasn't until later that we found out: 1) It is the Japanese word for runt and 2) We had spelled it wrong.

    Regardless of all that, I kept the nickname for a while. But I've stopped using it for anything new, and started discouraging its use in conversation. When it was obscur
  • Your nickname also could prevent you from getting a job. I'm in IT, if you Google my real name you get almost nothing. I wouldn't want to use 'Rodney Dill' on my resume.
  • You do not want to work for a company that ask such stupid questions.

    If a HR manager even considers taking into account the search results from googling somebodies name - apart from maybe that news report of his conviction of mass-murder ten years ago - he isn't the kind of guy you want to work for.
    A value of someones IT work is *not* measured by what results a search of his name on google yields. I'd stear clear of any employer to dumb to realise that. A question like that would have me give a polite but f

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by base3 ( 539820 )

      If a HR manager even considers taking into account the search results from googling somebodies name - apart from maybe that news report of his conviction of mass-murder ten years ago - he isn't the kind of guy you want to work for.
      I hate to break it to you, but nearly everybody does this now. Most aren't stupid enough to admit it to candidates.
  • I don't use my real name, and I switch nicknames for different sites. This way I can't be stalked online for any reason. Sure in this specific case it might be a positive, but one can imagine many other negatives due to your online identity being revealed.
  • At the top of the resume:

    John Q. Programmer
    (internet handle: glorb the barbarian)
    123 Main Street
    Anytown, USA

    Unless he's a real straight-laced and old-fashioned hiring manager I don't think this would hurt you, and it might help by making you stand out. Plus he's more likely to Google you out of curiosity if nothing else.

  • My real name [google.com]

    Well that didn't work out so well...

    My nick [google.com]

    Oops.

  • Hmm, it seems like it would be rather easy to assume someone's identity, especially for totally anonymous nicknames. "Yes, I ran a major website for 10 years under the nickname CmdrTaco" - not really a great example since everybody knows his real name, but you get the idea. This actually became an issue in a different forum which I was involved with.

  • No reactions from employers yet? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by xant ( 99438 ) on Saturday November 24, 2007 @12:23PM (#21463029) Homepage
    Wow, a hundred comments in and nobody seems to have posted from the employer side of the table. I'll do that.

    It's quite simple. Put your online nickname--if the Google results are flattering. If they're not, then don't. It's really no different from anything else you'd include on your resume. Left a good job on friendly terms? Put that. Perp-walked out of a job in handcuffs? Leave that out. There's not much nuance here: If someone else shares your nickname, and that guy's a dick, you probably shouldn't put your nickname, lest you be put in the position of having to explain his posts. If you use your nickname in porn discussion forums online, leave it out.

    On the other hand, maybe your nick links people to logs of great technical discussions you've participated in, on IRC. Or it links to yourself being helpful on a technical mailing list in your field of specialty, or even just yourself showing interest in your field of specialty. For pete's sake, of course you want your employer to see that. As someone who reads resumes and does interviews, that's extremely valuable information to me. I would check it on Google, and I would be interested in what I found there, and if it was positive, I would be strongly leaning toward you before I even picked up a phone to set up the interview.

    --

    p.s. god I love having a unique name. Thanks to my name and many years of contributions to some high-profile open source stuff, you literally have to go 15 pages deep into Google's results for my name, before you find even a single entry that's not legitimately about me. If I ever have to find another job, I can guarantee you I'll be telling people to Google me. ;-)
  • If there is something on the internet that you feel would make a positive impression on a prospective employer highlight it specifically in your CV.

    For example:

    I am an active member of the Linux community, regularly posting on the Linux Kernel mailing list. My contributions can be found at here [google.com]

    That way you're not relying on their detective skills to locate all the best bits, as well as there being no confusion about whether this is you or not.

    I would not recommend random searching for information about peo
  • I have always (i.e. since the late 1980'ies) assumed that everything I write online can be used against me.

    This is of course obvious in places like UseNet or Slashdot, but I try to behave the same way in email or IM.

    Since I've also managed to keep the same email address since 1994, and always signed Usenet posts with my full name & email, it is trivially easy to Google me. Prospective clients/employers who do so should hopefully get a good impression.

    Terje Mathisen
  • This is an interesting one.

    Most of the people who I've interviewed (or at least read their resumes) are pretty bland. It's their real name, list of employers, blah, blah.

    Myself, the resume is the simple list of jobs, experience, etc. I try to explain as well as I can in a short form (just 4 printed pages) my history and skills.

    In the resume, I have my personal site name. I use it for a lot of things. If you look at my personal site, it's kinda bare. I rea

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by f_raze13 ( 982309 )
      So, does it usually help or hurt your job prospects when your interviewer sees the links to porn at the bottom of the page?

      I mean, I don't think you can get a job based on the quality of your smutty smutty chicks links.
  • ... is to rub their noses in it.

    After being hired as a professor for a small university, someone googled me. A collegue (actually the department gossip) came to me and said in low tones "You know, they found out you belong to the Subgenius thing.".

    So I went and found the most outrageous "Subgenius thing" I could, a picture of me in a pink dress, chartruse fishnet hose, a black baseball cap and cowboy boots, playing guitar on stage. I printed out the picture and put it on my door.

    If they ever bothered to try
  • Yeah, this is a problem I've long considered...

  • Well Mr. Goatse, (Score:3, Funny)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Saturday November 24, 2007 @03:27PM (#21464515)
    I suppose it all depends on what your potential employer might find when they Google your nickname.

Slashdot Top Deals

A budget is just a method of worrying before you spend money, as well as afterward.

Close