Arleen Bradley Career Coaching

There might be several reasons why you want a cyber-safe resume, but there are two I am considering here.  They are identity theft and protecting your on-line identity.  Identity theft is costly financially and  time-consuming to rectify.  Protecting your online identity will prevent current or former employer from knowing you are looking for a job. 

Why:   

• Your identity is vulnerable when you have a résumé posted online.  Identity thieves can buy your résumé from sites that sell the information.   It is how some free career sites make their money.  The thieves then contact you posing as potential employers looking for your social security number and bank account information.
• If you are already employed, you may not want your current employer to know you are looking for another job.
• Or if you are an unemployed job searcher there may be people you won’t want to know you are unemployed.
• To overcome the discrimination against the unemployed, some people protect their on line identity.  Doing this gives the impression that they are hiding a job search from a current employer.

 How: 

• Be selective where you post your résumé.  Read the privacy information and any other disclaimers to know what the policy is for each site.
• Be careful of sites that offer to broadcast your résumé.  You won’t know where they are posted and what the site’s policies are.
• Remove the usual contact information including home address and phone number.  Open an email account for your job search on trusted sites like Google, Yahoo!, Hotmail, etc. and use this email as your contact information instead of a work email or your home email that is connected to your internet service provider.   It is best to use a professional email name.
• Instead of using a business name, use a description of the company such as East Coast based financial institution instead of Yourlocal Bank, City, State.  The same goes for your job title if it is specific to you and/or your company.
• Don’t include any license numbers, patent numbers, trademarks or any similar information that can be traced to you and/or your company.

By taking the above steps, you are preventing identity thieves and prying eyes from finding out about you.  But you are also making it difficult to recruiters and hiring managers to contact you.  You will have to decide if the tradeoff is worth it.

photo credit:  freedigitalphotos.net renjith krishnan