While we would like to think that everyone understands our motives, emotions, and "true self", the Warner Bros' movie, Batman Begins says this is not always the case. As Rachel Dawes was so kind to remind us, "...It's not who you are underneath, it's what you do that defines you." Who we are perceived to be and the impressions we have left along the way may or may not be what we intended. While we've been taught that "we can't please all of the people all of the time", we would certainly like to think that most people would look back fondly on working with us.
However, what would people say about you and me if they could talk openly about our professional performance without having to give their identity. Does total anonymity and an online, unlimited audience give individuals an open door to praise or slam you? And are people full of enough honesty and integrity to give constructive feedback and true commendation without using this as a format to degrade, demean, and harm? http://www.getunvarnished.com is testing these very waters.
According to their website:
"What is Unvarnished?
Unvarnished is an online resource for building, managing, and researching professional reputation, using community-contributed, professional reviews. Unvarnished reviews help you get the inside scoop on other business professionals, providing candid assessments of coworkers, potential hires, business partners, and more. By contributing Unvarnished reviews, you can share your knowledge of other professionals, giving credit where credit is due, and valuable feedback where needed. Lastly, your own Unvarnished profile, which you may create yourself or claim one that has been created for you, helps you take control of and build your own professional reputation. Get recognition for your accomplishments and actively manage your career growth."
Getunvarnished.com says, even though identities are hidden, because reviewers can also be scored on the accuracy of their posting, there is a checks and balances system to make sure the individuals being reviewed are being treated fairly and comments are accurate. However, the general public is not able to access this website to see if they are on it and manage their reputation. Anyone interested must contact Getunvarnished.com and ask to join their website. Requests are then added to a waiting list, and individuals are contacted when an "opening" becomes available. Which begs the question, how do we protect ourselves if we are not always given access to what is being said about us? The answer is we just keep checking and trying.
According to a recent study by Pew Internet, we take our reputation and what is said about us online very seriously. "More than half (57%) of adult internet users say they have used a search engine to look up their name and see what information was available about them online, up from 47% who did so in 2006. Young adults, far from being indifferent about their digital footprints, are the most active online reputation managers in several dimensions. For example, more than two-thirds (71%) of social networking users ages 18-29 have changed the privacy settings on their profile to limit what they share with others online
We need to think about what our employers and associates have access to reading about us online – from what we post about ourselves to what others post about us. In an AP article today on this very subject, it states:
...young people also are at a point in their lives where... they're looking for work and just starting to develop a name for themselves. Consider also that the study found that a quarter of online adults said their employers now have policies about how they portray themselves online. 'Young adults have, in many ways, been forced to become experts in their own form of social revision,' Madden says. They're also an extremely "brand conscious" generation, says Fred Stutzman, a doctoral candidate at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina who co-founded ClaimID.com, a free online identity management service that he now uses as a research project. 'Increasingly, it's the advice that young people get from counselors and elsewhere: `You need to have your own brand and you have to watch that brand,'” Stutzman says. Simply put, we need to monitor what we post about ourselves, what others post about us, and what we post about others.
Integrity must start with the power of one. Each one of us will have to commit to using technology correctly to treat individuals the way we would want to be treated: to uplift, support, and critique appropriately without slander and malice. We must guard our reputation online as closely as we would in public. We need to think about the ramifications of our actions prior to the actual action because how others view us is truly based on what we do not our intention. And as the Information Super Highway gets wider and goes farther, remember to keep your eyes on your reputation so it doesn’t get run over in the process and always "keep your Twitter clothes on".
Social Media and the Pea by Alice Ann Williams is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.Based on a work at www.socialmediaandthepea.blogspot.com.
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