‘What’s in a name?’ asked a certain Mr Shakespeare, and in terms of job searching it is certainly a very good question. Have you ever considered how inconsistencies in your name could be losing you job opportunities?
Many people have first names which can be shortened – Samuel or Samantha become Sam, Philip becomes Phil and William, as Mr Shakespeare would, I am sure, have confirmed, has a number of different possibilities. Some abbreviations or nicknames are even less obvious, such as John becoming Jack. While in social circles these ‘aliases’ probably don’t cause any problems, in business situations they could mean the difference between a potential employer or important contact being able to find you or not.
Imagine, for example, that you turn up at a networking event, introduce yourself as Michael and hand out your business cards which also identify you by the same name. You make a good impression on one of your contacts and he later wants to communicate with you but can’t find your business card. As he does remember your name, he decides to look you up on LinkedIn and Facebook, but he can’t find you anywhere…because on the former you are registered as Mike and on the latter as Mikey, the name by which you are known by your closest friends and family. Basically, he is stumped unless he happens to run into you again or can track you down through a mutual contact.
Take another scenario, where you have applied for an advertised vacancy and the recruiter wants to pre-screen candidates by searching them on Google. If you cannot be found because your username is something other than the name on your resume, the recruiter is just going to assume that you have no online presence and, on this basis alone, may decide not to take your application any further.
Total invisibility isn’t the only problem though. In some cases, you may only be partially visible. Again, imagine having put loads of time and effort into creating wonderful online profiles and gaining heaps of recommendations, only for a prospective employer to miss half of them because they do not show up in his Google search. Again, not ideal!
Whatever materials you use as part of your job search, whether online or offline, they must be consistent so that recruiters and contacts can see all the great things that you have to offer. If you are generally known by more than one name, therefore, it might be worthwhile taking a few minutes to make sure that you haven’t fallen into this trap. Oh, and it’s worth noting that, although it didn’t used to be possible, you can now change your username on Facebook, just in case…
August 24th, 2009 at 10:31 am
Very good point here. I have the added potential issue of using my middle name (since birth). So “offical” documents list me as Raymond but I use Scott daily for every purpose.
August 26th, 2009 at 8:14 am
Excellent point Scott, and thanks for this. Middle names, and even middle initials, do indeed offer more unfortunate opportunities for inconsistency. The trick is to find the combination that you prefer and stick with it.