By: Paul Croteau
Date: March 28, 2010
The Winnipeg Sun

Over the past few weeks, readers as well as the two local high school teachers who unfortunately became world wide “news subjects” have learned an important lesson. Actually, two lessons as a matter of fact. First of all, we have learned how important personal and professional reputation is to ongoing career success. Secondly, we have learned that while many of us now have our own social networking sites, and “twitter” our way into cyberspace, it became blatantly obvious to everyone that we do not have full control of that so called, “digital footprint”. Frankly, this has been a good lesson for all of us!

In the “good old” days, I would counsel up and coming professionals and senior executives to pay special attention to developing a strong and positive professional reputation. Normally, this meant working hard, being a continuous learner, being known for excellent work, and being customer focused. It also meant being a leader in your field, being involved in your professional and/or industry association or contributing back to the community through volunteer activities. Developing a reputation also meant networking through attending special events... in other words, getting “out there”, becoming known and developing a reputation. Developing a positive reputation is critical to career success. You need to prove yourself, people need to know they can trust you and that you are reliable at all times. 

Well, the world has changed. Now, not only do you have to create and protect your public reputation “on earth”, you need to pay diligent attention to the reputation you develop in cyberspace. When you get on the internet and create a digital footprint through membership in the growing number of social networking sites or through your own personal “blog”, your footprint can be traced. In fact, your digital footprint can now be traced by what you have done, what sites you have visited, how long you stayed at a particular site, and where your site originates from geographically.

Marketing specialists are busy analyzing your digital footprint so that they can understand your routines, your social network and your personal interests all for the purpose of developing a targeted marketing strategy to tap into your special needs. And they are not the only ones. Executive search professionals are now using online sources not only to identify interested individuals but also to check the “online reputation” of their candidates.

What does this mean for candidates? It means that it is all the more important that candidates start paying attention to “online reputation management”. This means that you need to diligently monitor what is being said about you in the social media universe. You need to ensure that anything and everything about you that is represented in social media is consistent with the reputation you wish to develop for yourself.  You need also to recognize that you cannot control all of the information because much of social media is informal.

On the other hand, in spite of the surge of social media and the dangers it can represent to your professional reputation, as we have seen over the past few months and weeks, the foundation for a solid professional reputation continues to link back to that old, rock bottom earthly trait called “personal behaviour”.  And let’s face it; no one can control your personal behaviour other than you.

Protect your career; set standards for yourself. If you act in an ethical manner and demonstrate exemplary personal and professional behaviour at all times, you won’t need to worry about who is in your environment taking unauthorized photos. You won’t need to experience sleepless nights worrying about someone taking comments from your blog out of context and sending them worldwide. And those individuals who engage in this unscrupulous behaviour will have their own reputations to worry about.


Research and Review by 6P Marketing

Paul Croteau, B.Comm., CMA, FCMA is a partner with Waterhouse Executive Search Partners, a Canada-wide executive search firm. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or 204-934-8821.