Astron Blog and Personal Websites

We have a new website design here. For some reason our old one just went kaput when Blogger moved over to a new design system. Sorry about any problems you may have been having, but hopefully they're all fixed now. It should be clean and easy to navigate and, hopefully, easy to read as well. Let Jennifer or myself know if you're still having any issues.

Speaking of websites, they can be a great way, for a candidate of getting your name out there on the internet. Showing that you have designed a website (and maybe putting some of your interests on there) can be a living resume out there on the internet. When I Googled "Jennifer Loftus", one of the hits that came back was her website she made in 2006. One of my friends was able to build a website which is a very cool online portfolio of her work. When done right, a website can be a great tool for a job seeker and a great way to have a Google search come back with more than a Facebook or LinkedIn profile.

But done poorly, a website can be a bad thing for a candidate to have out there. Like Facebook, Twitter or MySpace profiles should not have compromising pictures or text, so shouldn't a personal website. I recently heard from a friend that they were in the middle of the interview process with a candidate when they decided to Google their name. The result returned a website. One section on the website was pictures full of the candidate partying. Another had "life goals", which, while sounding promising, had such lofty goals as "partying with P. Diddy" and "sleeping with a celebrity". Not exactly the type of information that gets you hired.

It can be a good idea to make a personal website, but as everything you put out there on the World Wide Web, make sure it's appropriate and professional. You never know who will see it someday.

Saluting Our Blogroll Pt. 1

It's time to take a look at the fellow bloggers we link to on the right and give you a little idea of what they're writing about...

Blogs for Job hasn't had a post in a while, but shows that employees can be found in odd places (including one who just left a comment): click here

We realized we had an error in the address for Cara Welch's Public Policy Perceptions blog for WorldAtWork so we've relinked to there (click here) and ask you to check out her Earth Day article on Earth Day 2008: click here

Cheezhead talks about a theme we discussed recently and takes you in their latest article beyond Facebook and MySpace recruiting: click here

CollegeRecruiter.com has a great humor article today about 10 ways that the job market resembles Matzah: click here

Which reminds us...Happy Passover!!!

George's Employment Blawg touches on a subject we'll be getting into in a later post...but with the job market how it is, internships are becoming more and more important: click here

HR Web Cafe give you a full menu of articles about everything from spear phishing to bring-your-gun-to-work-day (or permanently): click here

Lastly for today, we go to HR World who asks if male and female owned businesses differ? click here

We'll be back with more tomorrow...enjoy!!!

Facebook and the Office

What happens when social networking and the office combine? Well...it can be an awkward situation, as written here in the Boston Globe: click here

Let's say that situation does come up--you are a boss and one of your subordinates tries to friend you on Facebook or MySpace or one of the other social networking websites or you are an employee and your boss sends you a friend request...what do you do?

Well first things first, whether you are a high school student, college student, young professional or "old" professional, you should scrub your social networking profiles. You never know who is looking at it.

If you think you're exempt because you are a student...just check out some of the articles from this Google search: click here

And if you think you're exempt because you're in the job world, just check out some of the articles from this Google search: click here (or, if you prefer, Myspace: click here)

And as I wrote way back in July 2006 for Astronology, the New Age of Background Checks has moved on to social networking websites: click here

So the truth is, make sure that everything in your profile is Kosher because the last thing you want is to have something meant from your friends, end up in your workspace: it could end up costing you your job.