This is taken from www.reading.ac.uk/thisisme. Thanks to the team at the University of Reading for allowing us to reproduce their guidance here.

This Is Me

Help your career to take off – let people find you on the web, and show them what you can do. We all know social networking can be a bit of fun – organising parties, uploading those awkward moments captured forever in photographic form, flirting, playing games or even organising the occasional study session. How about makmyspaing sure your more credit-worthy efforts are available for recruiters or potential customers to find?

Privacy

Make sure you use the privacy settings in whatever online system you use (Facebook, Myspace etc.) to full effect.  Decide who you want to see things, and make sure you set the permissions so that only they can see them – and not the rest of the world (including your Mum and Dad and that prudish boss you might want to work for in a couple of years time).

Showcase

Obviously, you rock.  But you can’t expect the rest of the world to know that, unless you tell them.  Put up examples of your work, and make sure that they can be seen.  Get people to give you feedback on them, and show that you can learn from the experience.  You can create a blog or web pages for free on many different services.

Network

Don’t be shy – get involved in conversations about your field of interest.  It doesn’t have to be terribly academic – if you are a sports fan and can offer insights, post them somewhere and start a conversation with people.  If you can spark discussion, and have civilized conversations with people, there is a good chance it will help build your reputation.

Think about using tools like Twitter to get involved in global conversations and build up a network of people who you can learn from, and who can let you know whether you come across well to potential employers.

Help yourself, help others

It can be hard to spot when other people mention you.  Get friends to occasionally search for you online, and to let you know if they find things which reflect badly on you – and do the same for them.  Don’t just search on their names, either – nicknames and their interests can be useful was of finding results you may miss otherwise.

Mitigate risks

There is always the chance – unless you lead the life of a saint – that something you do will find its way onto the internet.  You might have a photo taken, and someone else might put a silly caption on it which can be misinterpreted, or you might actually be doing something daft and one of your friends might decide to share.

If it does happen, negotiate for it to be removed.  If that fails, explain online why it really isn’t as bad as it looks.  Make sure someone looking for you online is more likely to find positive stuff than anything which might sneak in without you knowing about it.

Lock-down

Before you lock-down your social networking profile and become a virtual recluse – think about whether other people will assume you are just a very private person, or whether there is a hint that maybe you have something to hide.

Name yourself well

Email Ids, monikers and nicknames – all ways of saying something about yourself online.  Many people find they start out using a pseudonym in order to be able to distance themselves from the discussion, or because the system asked them for a nickname and they used one their mates have been calling them for years.  But, let’s face it, iamalovegod may not impress an employer, and some peple won’t even see an email from fluffypinkbunnyknickers@aol.com because their spam filters might consider the message to be junk.

Whether you like it or not, anything you do has an effect on your ‘personal brand’, so you better make sure the brand has a good name to go with it.

The This Is Me project was sponsored by Eduserv to produce learning materials to help people discover the potential, and avoid the pitfalls, associated with their Digital Identity.

You can check out the website at www.reading.ac.uk/thisisme

Contact details

If you have any queries, or would like to know more, please feel free to get in touch with us.

• Professor Shirley Williams (shirley.williams@reading.ac.uk) is the project lead.
• Pat Parslow (p.parslow@reading.ac.uk) is the technical guy.
• Sarah Fleming (s.c.fleming@reading.ac.uk) is the project officer (she organises Pat)