I had a lively chat with my boss today about “The Lasting Tale of the Web,” that is the immortality of sorts that one achieves through active or reactive life events captured on the internet through various channels. We were talking specifically about the fusion of generational effects of social media and its impact on future employees (and our own children) as it relates to HR Management and Recruiting, i.e. young people doing stupid stuff on their myspace page or writing controversial articles for their school newspapers (he would kill me if I perpetuated such effects by linking to said article).

As a Seattle Recruiting Manager, I research every qualified candidate passing muster during my initial phone interview in a variety of manners (google, Yahoo!, myspace, facebook, LinkedIn). I start to think of friends that post pictures of their newborn babies and in effect capturing their lives on the web. In 20 years, there will be a whole generation of people whose lives will be fully accessible to people like me. Decisions to hire will be made with a dashboard that will scrape these historical media files along with previously posted resumes (think they don’t exist?), transcripts, performance evaluations (more discussions around this topic in the future), criminal and credit checks. And oh by the way, companies are already connecting your username with your real life identity.  

In reseaching this fact that what is put on the web stays on the web.  I read  a very well written post by Mitch Joel called ”Your Blog – Your Personal Brand And The Big Long Beast That Is The Long Tail“ 

He is addressing Marketing, Communications, and PR professionals, but I strongly believe it applies to all of us including HR Managers.

“All of the content a Blogger creates is a reflection of their personal brand and, for most, the only reflection of who they are in everybody else’s eyes.

Blogging is still a relatively new channel. All of this content being created becomes part of your Personal Brand’s Long Tail. It will exist forever when somebody does any kind of search on you, and can be accessed by anyone looking for specific content that you Blogged about.”

 Be careful of the personal brand that you put on the web, I (or someone like me) may be evaluating it.