Stuff To Watch

Did you graduate this weekend? Last weekend?  Are you on LinkedIn? Why the hell not?  It’s a great way to connect with people, list your experience, and promote yourself to employers.  Kind of like Facebook for businesspeople.  Here’s my LinkedIn Profile.  If you’re in the dark, check out this video:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pXWrHN0elg

This is a two-parter, so make sure you check out Part 2 in the related videos.  Moving on…

Stuff To Listen To

Audio books are some of my favorite things on the face of the earth.  There’s so much good information you can get from a good audio book in the car that it makes an Audible account hard to go without.

Since many of you are graduating, I suggest spending some of your graduation money on a subscription to Audible.

Right now you can download an Audiobook for $7.49 and Save 50% for Your First 3 Months.

With your subscription, you also get access to a daily download of the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times – both great reads to prepare you for interview banter.

My suggestion for your first audio book: Freakonomics: Revised Edition by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner.  It’s one of those books that will leave you wanting more.  Steven Levitt is an economist who tackles real-world problems.  In this book, he takes examples of two seemingly unrelated pieces of information together and shows correlations over and over again.

Levitt has found a way to turn the funky randomness of life into some sort of meaningful pattern, as any good economist should.  It’s funny and engaging, and it’ll make you wonder about what other little things are connected.  It’s one of my all-time favorite books.  Enjoy!

I See You…

I just did a Google search on my own name and my city.  Luckily, my results aren’t that bad.

You might be able to, after some digging, discern where my Twitter page is, figure out which city and state I live in, and figure out that I worked at a campus radio station.

You won’t find that picture of me by the side of the pool being “rescued” by Green Peace.

A simple search of a random name in a random city reveals someone’s Facebook… with a rather embarrassing picture.  Yikes!  Some are even worse, and I don’t dare post those here for fear that someone might actually get stalked.  You can find all sorts of things on an un-locked Facebook profile.  You can find even worse things on an unlocked MySpace profile.

Everything from that stint you did on Girls Gone Wild to your birthday or exact address.

I’m a little crazy when it comes to this topic – I tend to spirit away information on myself like a dying squirrel covets nuts.  I don’t post my birthday publicly, I don’t post my address, my cell phone, my personal e-mail address, my… well, you get the idea.  I’d like to think that my hard work is worth it – I honestly can’t find myself online except through sources that I’m okay with.  I mean, here I am, typing away on my blog while some wacko nut-job out there is plotting his own little Silence of the Lambs game.  I have every reason to be careful – I have always hated baskets.

Okay, so I’m a little paranoid about that.  But employers are the real threat: they will find that horrible picture of you, share it with your would-have-been co-workers without hesitation, have a good laugh at your expense, and then send you your rejection e-mail.  Or worse – you could already have the job and be forced to watch it slip out from under you for one ill-conceived blog post.

The way I treat privacy is simple – if I’d let my best friend’s grandma read it, it’s okay to put on my blog.  Lucky for me, my best friend’s grandma is… well, a whore.  If you’re not so lucky, then you should take every available precaution to protect your dirty dancing pictures, embarrassing YouTube videos, and anything else you can think of that maybe it wouldn’t be a good idea to show your boss.

You shouldn’t go all scorched-earth, though – there’s still beneficial public profiles you could have.  An active, business-oriented Twitter, a LinkedIn profile, your personal website (the non-pornographic one).  All of these things can help brand you with all the professionalism that will let you land (or keep) your dream job.

Remember – granny is watching you.