I agree completely. It is unfair for an individual to continue to be punished for their mistake over and over because of a Google search. However, it is that very Google search that prevents employers from asking for clarification. If they can see in a quick glance that there's something -- anything -- wrong with you, they will not try hard to figure out the extenuating circumstances. They will simply move on to the next viable candidate that doesn't have a bad online reputation. It may not be right, but it's the truth.

"Research commissioned by Microsoft in December 2009 found that 79 percent of United States hiring managers and job recruiters surveyed reviewed online information about job applicants. Most of those surveyed consider what they find online to impact their selection criteria. In fact, 70 percent of United States hiring managers in the study say they have rejected candidates based on what they found." - http://www.microsoft.com/privacy/dpd/research.aspx

Indeed, this is a big problem for all Internet users. If a family member or friend mentions you on Facebook, or a people-search website shares your home address, then you're online. In this case, even if you don't use the Internet at all, you still have an Internet reputation.

The idea of an Internet ecosystem in which all of our actions influence others, and are themselves influenced, means that nothing online is insignificant.

Rob Frappier
Community Manager
ReputationDefender

Michael Arrington argued a similar point in an article at TechCrunch several months back (http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/28/reputation-is-dead-its-time-to-overlook-our-indiscretions/). Arrington's post coincided with the launch of Unvarnished, an anonymous professional review website that has been described as a "Yelp for people."

Quoting Arrington: "We’re going to be forced to adjust as a society. I firmly believe that we will simply become much more accepting of indiscretions over time. Employers just won’t care that ridiculous drunk college pictures pop up about you when they do a HR background search on you."

In a blog post, ReputationDefender CEO and privacy expert Michael Fertik agreed with Arrington to a point, but arrived at a different conclusion. (http://www.reputationdefenderblog.com/2010/03/29/michael-arrington-techcrunch-on-reputation/)

Fertik essentially argued that while individual items may have less bearing on an person's reputation, the rapid increase of data aggregation technologies and people-search companies will create comprehensive people profiles in which individuals are reduced to basic numbers, like a personal FICO credit score for your reputation.

(Note: I work for ReputationDefender in the role of Community Manager)

Quoting Fertik: "As data proliferate, it will get harder and more time-consuming to develop these comprehensive pictures manually. What we’re seeing happen already will happen more swiftly: more companies will appear that seek to aggregate the data points that are discretely and variously available (i.e. from the open web, from the social web, from closed databases, from virtual worlds, etc.) into comprehensive portraits. And if we can predict anything, Simpler Will Prevail. People will be “reduced” to numbers.

In this context, “Simpler Will Prevail” means that more detailed and nuanced Personal Scoring will appear and will dominate the existing scoring offerings like FICO. Everyone likes a nice tidy number that concretely summarizes the value of something (credit-worthiness, a stock price, a zip code, how many followers you have on Twitter, how many unique users you have on your website), and personal scoring will be just as prevalent, widespread, and, in many cases, life-affecting. When these scores appear and become more data-rich and stable, third parties will start to rely on both context-specific scores (e.g. eBay buyer/seller scores) and universally applicable scores (“honesty” scores, “business reputation” scores, “good date material” scores) for snap judgments that would make even Malcolm Gladwell lose his hair.

In other words, the future will see ever more reliance on concise, summary-level reputation assessments. It may be true, as Arrington suggests, that a particular photo or anonymous comment will have less impact than it does today. But that outcome, if it obtains, will be a function of the fact that each of those data points will simply be included and imputed in a broader and hugely impactful score or snap conclusion–based on digitally aggregated and correlated information–about a person’s reputation. In a way, Arrington’s own view that a “Yelp for individuals” may or will appear tends toward the same conclusion. Some attempts at person-review pages have already appeared. In the end, though, it is likely that data points will be collected from many of those pages (i.e. not just one) and then mashed up with social web results, open web results, Google results, private database results, and others to form comprehensive images of individuals."

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Just some information to help further fuel this interesting conversation.

Rob Frappier
Community Manager
ReputationDefender