Question: How do you mitigate false information about you online?

I just got a call from a career coaching client who found out that he was listed online as having a professional certification that he does not, in fact, have. He was concerned that an employer would wonder if he was falsifying his credentials, and he'd lose out on job opportunities. In his case, someone else had posted the information and it ended up on a site he couldn't edit.

What would you do in that situation?

Here was my advice to him:

1) Walk, don't run, to see if you can get your name listed in your LinkedIn public profile. (example: my profile is http://www.linkedin.com/in/kathyrobinson). If your name is taken, try variations, for example: robinson-kathy, kathy_robinson_career_coach, etc. If you can get some variation of your name, it might show up higher in search results than the website with incorrect (or embarrassing) information.

2) Since you can control all of the information about you on LinkedIn, you'll want to make sure that this site is up to date and searchable. If a recruiter, friend or client asks you about incorrect information they found on another site, you can say that your LinkedIn profile is the "official" record.

3) Check out your profile on ZoomInfo. This is a site that crawls the web to look for articles, mentions, links, etc. about you. If you have a common name like I do, chances are that there's more than one profile out there for you, and the good thing about ZoomInfo is it lets you request to combine the profiles. They'll also let you add and edit, and are more willing to help you correct something that's not accurate.

4) You could always start a blog (using free blogging software) and post your true credentials online that way. (Just be careful about posting your email and phone number so that you don't get a lot of spam.)

5) Once a month, you should be in the habit of taking a moment to search for yourself on Google. Use quotes around your name - example: "Kathy Robinson". Once you figure out the search terms that work, you can also set up Google alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts), which can email you on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis to let you know if anything new has been posted about you online.

That's MY two cents... anyone else have any good tips to help people out who might be in the same boat?

Kathy Robinson
Career Coach
TurningPoint