Personal Buzz Monitoring

I was on the train on the way home on Friday checking Twitter, when I read a tweet from SJDelaney about the death of Jesse Helms. Being a curious kind a guy and not being up to speed on my American politics, I googled Jesse Helms to find out who he was. As is often the case for such questions my next action was to click the Wikipedia link, but instead of being greeted with the usual Wiki page, I came across the simple statement "Jesse Helms, burn in hell"

My curiosity really sparked now, I googled again and started to read and when I came back to Wikipedia a few minutes later, normal service had been resumed. Now Jesse clearly did a lot of good in his life, but this is overshadowed by his extreme views on many issues such as gay rights, abortion, ethnic minorities and other such topics. I personally find many of his points of view abhorrent and the insensitive manner in which he choose to express his opinions equally unacceptable.

However, whilst my heart is firmly in the camp that says the internet is a forum for free speech and should not be regulated or censored , I can't and don't condone the sort of cyber vandalism that I witnessed on Friday. If you have a point of view, set it out in a rational manner. Jesse's record speaks for itself, by resorting to personal insults on a recently deceased person who has no right of reply, you lower yourself to his level.

But the fact remains that we have, quite rightly, a forum for free speech. We have known this for some time and we advise our clients to monitor what is being said about them online. OK, most companies understand the issues, but what about candidates?

Recently Steve O'Neil of Security Watchdog wrote a good article about using the internet for background checking. Now professional background checking companies are trained to take a balanced view of information that they find about individuals. However an increasing number of companies are background checking candidates themselves and some will perhaps not be so discerning about what they find. How many candidates even think about, let alone check, what has been said about them online?

As Web 2.0 type applications become an increasing part of our everyday life and many of us seize the opportunity to share our passionately held views and get involved in heated discussions about topics ranging from business to football to technology to pretty much any other topic you care to think of, should we stop to think about the online picture we are painting about ourselves and/or what other people who don't agree with our opinions may be contributing to that canvass?

It feels uncomfortable to suggest that people should have to think about about, let alone check, what is being said about them online and for most people it probably is. But I can only see the likes of social networks, blogs, twitter etc becoming more and more part of daily lives and perhaps this is something that jobseekers need to start thinking about?