Invisible Adjunct

Agreed: We've googled our short list of candidates for our last two searches.

I understand the point being made here, but I do think that one ought to step back from immediate situations and ask: when do I exercise the freedom of speech which we love to celebrate?
Do I clam up until I get the B.A. under my belt? Until I am admitted to graduate school? Until I am an abd? Until I get that job offer? Until I pass three year review? Until I get tenure? Until I'm promoted to Associate Prof? Until full Prof?
As one who has clearly never known when to keep his mouth shut, I don't ask these questions lightly. But the system will teach you voluntary restraint until you may have nothing at all to say.

Jeez, Maybe I shouldn't have put my full name in my URL.

Well, that's less of a worry than blog entries haunting the blogger in court. But didn't everyone already suspect that employers, friends, acquaintances, et cetera, Googled everyone anyone?

Doesn't googling people with a common name open the door to false positives.

How do I know the details I have pulled up relate to you and not someone else with the same name and/or some shared details?

Neil, try googling yourself and see how you recognize which ones are you and which ones are other "Neil Roberts". It would take someone longer to figure out which was which if all they had was your c.v., but I'm sure they could do it.

I think Ralph's question is the really pertinent one, and my answer would be that you have to be judicious about what you say until you're hired into a tenure-track position. Is that stupid? Yes, but that's the way it is. Once you're in a position, I think you can (usually) go ahead and be whomever and say whatever you want to do.

It depends a little on how interested your colleagues might be in online writing. One of the odder things about my own blogging is that I strongly suspect that virtually none of my colleagues at Swarthmore know I do it, which is partially a function of the relative disinterest of a lot of the faculty in online fora. That's not the case everywhere.

Just a quick note:

I'm not trying to foster paranoia. I just want to remind people of the power of google, because it has come up in the past with a couple of posters who didn't realize how public their comments were. A personal weblog with a regular community of posters can get to seem like its own cosy little corner, but it it is publicly accessible. People are of course becoming more aware of google. And many people who post here don't use their real names or their full names.

"But the system will teach you voluntary restraint until you may have nothing at all to say."
Yes, this is a real concern. I don't know how to answer this at the moment (or at least, I have too much to say, but not enough time right now to collect my thoughts into anything coherent). For now I'd just point out that the google issue is not only a question of freedom of speech: it also raises privacy concerns.

Just to emphasize this, I just decided for the first time to google my colleagues. You can actually learn a decent amount about them as historians--a few publications online here and there, a very good sense of their presentations and activities in the past five years, a few Swarthmore-related news stories, a c.v. in one case. Not a single one, as far as I can tell, has ever posted or published anything online. There's actually an argument to be made for keeping your Google profile "clean" in this way when you're on the job market--not so much for reasons of fear, but because the more you post, the harder it is for a committee to use Google to simply verify your professional activities. When you google me, it takes a long time before my presentations, conference papers and such pop up, because the blog is so much more linked to and therefore comes higher up on a Google listing. There's too much noise to use Google to verify anything besides the fact that I have a big mouth.

Tim,
My issue here is that as web content expands, stuff you would never have thought twice about in the past becomes available. At Swarthmore, years of the campus newspaper, the Phoenix, are on-line. At some point, some Swarthmore alum is going to get googled by a job search committee (since so many swat alums go to grad school) and some bad op-ed piece is going to show up written when they were a 1st year student and still not in fully control of language and presentation. It will be full of sarcasm that doesn't work, inappropriate humor etc. Chances are that person will have learned some valuable lessons from the op-ed piece, like not to make rape analogies about people who cut in line at the dining hall or something, but the search committee won't know that. They may not even have a date or context for the piece. All they have is this piece of crap writing that the person a) regrets and b) learned a valuable lesson from and is now a better writer (and maybe even person?) for it? In my view, no job search committee ought to be googling anybody who has yet to hold at least a one-year position. And they should certainly not count anything not written within the last five years and not count anything without a date on it.

Tim,
My issue here is that as web content expands, stuff you would never have thought twice about in the past becomes available. At Swarthmore, years of the campus newspaper, the Phoenix, are on-line. At some point, some Swarthmore alum is going to get googled by a job search committee (since so many swat alums go to grad school) and some bad op-ed piece is going to show up written when they were a 1st year student and still not in fully control of language and presentation. It will be full of sarcasm that doesn't work, inappropriate humor etc. Chances are that person will have learned some valuable lessons from the op-ed piece, like not to make rape analogies about people who cut in line at the dining hall or something, but the search committee won't know that. They may not even have a date or context for the piece. All they have is this piece of crap writing that the person a) regrets and b) learned a valuable lesson from and is now a better writer (and maybe even person?) for it? In my view, no job search committee ought to be googling anybody who has yet to hold at least a one-year position. And they should certainly not count anything not written within the last five years and not count anything without a date on it.

I can vouch that while I was on the job market, at least one person complimented me on the positive comments I had received on a website that allows students to post anonymous ratings of the professors of the university, which they could have only found by googling my name.

Hi there,

Long time listener, first time caller.

IA, I'm curious where it becomes an issue of privacy. When somebody posts to a weblog or an online forum they're surely fully aware of the fact that what they post is readily accessible to the public at large. If they're not, they ought to be.

Does the question then become one of how hiring commitees (and other organisations) look public works? Should anything that the candidate puts into the public sphere be fair game?

Of course these questions are likely what you're hinting at when you say "privacy concerns."

There is a certain amount of content on google you can control, and a certain amount you can't. The poster above who mentioned an old op-ed piece (and he brings up a really good point) is talking about things a person can't control. I mean, what are you supposed to do, not participate in a student paper as a freshman because one day you might be applying for academic jobs and get googled?

As for what you can control, it is generally a good idea to use a pseudonym (or at least not your full name or university e-mail) for a lot of web activity that will leave a record.

I myself have two webpages: one professional and one personal. The professional one is a big advertisement: "Hire me! I'm great!" The personal one has some creative writing and general silliness. I link from professional to personal (but not vice versa), but I do so with a disclaimer page that explicitly tells anyone interested in me as a scientist or employee not to go on. Now, they may choose to do so (and I'm not ashamed of the stuff of my other site - it's little essays and fiction stories and I'm applying for jobs in biology so who cares?), but they have been warned.

Both sites pop up on google. But the professional site pops up first, and has far more pages with my name on it.

I had heard that one of the purposes of googling people in job searches was to establish their race - in cases where applicants either don't fill out those dreaded affirmative action forms, or if the office doesn't share that info with the search committee. I don't know how widespread that is.

But yes, in summary I agree it is a good thing to think about and try to control what people see when they google you. In jobs and in life in general.

That hotel thing creeps me out!

The part about potential employers googling me doesn't, though I remain wary about the phenomenon. I suspect it is that I expect the latter and have taken steps to deal with it, while the former is going above and beyond what one expects the hotel to do. Googling to me is the technological equivalent of asking around town for the latest gossip on someone; it is reasonable to expect an employer to check out a _potential_ employee's _professional_ past, unreasonable but easy for them to learn personal details along the way. The employer needs to know whom they are going to be paying and how well he or she can handle the job, so some investigation is appropriate. For a hotel to do this, especially without the customer's knowledge or permission, is just wrong.

I don't post online under my own name unless I want professional credit for it, for example, and regularly google my own name to see what skeletons in the internet closet jump out -- not too many, though a few things I hadn't expected, since I wasn't the one who put the information online. I think, too, that even if I "went public" in my anonymous blog, I would do so in a way to make it difficult for google to call me up. There are a LOT of people with my first and last name, and none but me with that plus my middle initial, and it's pretty clear that this is the case to the careless googler of my name. I know I can't control all the information about me that gets on the web, but I can try to at least know what that information is and avoid providing more than is necessary.

And, yes, this may be the equivalent of self-censorship. However, what I tend to write anonymously are my off-the-cuff, not-well-thought-out blurts to the world; my professional work is clearly labeled so I get credit for it. If someone is going to take issue with my professional writings, written with the need to defend my ideas rigorously in mind, let them. If the ideas I have and defend keep me from being hired, I don't want to work there anyway.

I think Ralph has a good point, as does Martin. I blog under a pseudonym, but there are people who know who I am, partially because a colleague has a link to my blog, but under my name, and because a couple of other colleagues just figured it out. I tend not to get too political, but would like to think that blogs represent the same kind of expression that we are normally allowed off campus in our own time.

I'd never really specifically thought that job committees might Google me, although I have certainly Googled members of interview committees. I don't think it's too unreasonable that it would work both ways, and quite frankly, I think my blog (and many of the blogs I read) portrays me positively--at least I'd like to believe that. I do try to write most entries as if potential employers were reading.

At the very least, I'd like to believe that my blog shows that I am a thoughtful teacher and a reflective thinker, someone who is enthuisiastic about the work he does, and I believe that can only work in my favor.

Timothy makes a good point about a blog potentially burying more professional material (articles, conferences, etc). Of course much of that material would show up on a CV anyway and the candidate could direct the committee toward that work using specific URLs.

My name is relatively common, so I've always added the middle initial to stand out from the crowd. I wonder if the fact that a graduate labor leader, who has written extensively about corporate influence on the university, shares my name and middle initial hurt my job search last year. With a little research one could quickly learn that we were two different people, but that assumes that the hiring committee cared and was capable of doing the basic research.

Google cuts both ways. It's easy to find people, but it's easy for people to find you.

"A personal weblog with a regular community of posters can get to seem like its own cosy little corner, but it it is publicly accessible."

Interesting - I've never thought of this blog, for instance, as a cosy little corner, I've always thought of it as quite public and well-known. Well, 'always' - I mean as long as I've been reading blogs myself, which I guess is only a few months.

Googling can be quite interestingly disconcerting. Once when B&W was young, someone emailed me offering to write an article; I hadn't heard the name before so said something a bit offhand like 'Tell me more.' Then (stupid - I should have done it first) I googled and found a long list of impressive (and highly relevant to our subject matter) publications. I felt like such a fool.

Probably some or all of the anonymous posters here are household names, and no one will ever know.

I used to have two sites, one on my own name which was fairly neutral, and another one which was all-out political and pretty unrestrained.

After I'd been coming to IA for awhile I merged them, because I had decided that there was no reason for me to go to grad school or to think of a professional career (always had been a long shot). Correlation is not causation, but in reality IA was the last straw.

Of course, a mediocre detective could have used the "whois" function anyway, but that's beside the point.

I do think that pre-tenured academic people are, for good personal reasons, extraordinarily timid and circumspect. Not just about politics and personal life, but methodology, etc, too. Part of it is colleagiality -- you might end up seeing a [insert the methodology you most despise]-ist every day for years if you get a job. And my guess is that of two professionally equal candidates, in almost all cases the uncontroversial, unblemished, ritually clean one will be hired.

To me this does weaken the claims for the university as a home of unpopular ideas. Just because the ideas enforced are different than the ideas enforced outside the university doesn't mean that that is freedom.

Anonymous bloggers beware. Unless you've were very careful when setting up your website, it is possible to see your name, address and phone number by doing a search on the domain name.

The hotel thing creeps me out too.

I never thought that I would get a good room at the Bel-Air anyway.

Funny... I got my current (non-academic) job when my employer, for whom I had done some work a few years back, Googled me to get contact info -- he found lots of pages all over the net, but apparently none of them turned him off me. Rana, I think your middle initial dodge would not keep Googlers from finding you -- it is as easy to do a search for First Name Last Name as for "First Name Last Name", and the former will find pages with "First Name MI Last Name".

"I never thought that I would get a good room at the Bel-Air anyway."

Somebody recently arrived at this site through a google of "Robert Schwartz." Was it the BelAir?

Yes, but if Rana's name were "Sarah Q Smith" . . . well, none of the "Sarah Q Smith" pages show up on the first few pages of results searching under Sarah Smith.

My academic presence is First Middle Last, but I show up if you do a search on First Last, Middle Last or First Middle (though that one brings up a skirt for sale, followed by my academic page).

Which is why I use a pseudonym for blogs.

Perhaps this is a good argument for changing your last name to "Jones" when you get married, and giving your children nice generic names -- I hope Sylvia can find it in her heart to forgive me...

It's not so much that I'm invisible as that someone who doesn't know me or my interests very well will have a hard time figuring out what is static and what is not. (It helps that my middle initial is one that appears in a lot of abbreviations, and thus doesn't easily clarify things.) I've tried googling myself in all combinations I could think of, and only one specific way produces my professional sites in detail and, rather neatly, only those sites. Other search parameters generate a lot of "static." (It can be rather fun envisioning myself living the lives of the other "Sarah Smiths" out there!)

Of course we google people! And I think I wouldn't blink if I was recognised that way at a hotel. But then I live in a place where everybody already know everything about everybody. Actually, googling may be one of the first indicators of the Global Village rather than the Global City. Checking up on people in advance and trying to find out about them from asking around is a very Rural thing.

On the other hand... I am very curious as to how they would treat me after reading my blog...

Jeremy Osner wrote, "Perhaps this is a good argument for changing your last name to 'Jones.'" Oh dear. My name IS Jones. Lucky, or destined for obscurity? Doesn't matter much; I'm probably the only person in my department who would even think of googling someone anyway. (Now, will THAT come back to haunt me?)

Having googled friends and found quite the amusing alternate lives, I'm rather jealous.

It's like the newest version of my jealousy as a child that my name has no nicknames (except adding -ie, making my name longer).

The prospect of hiring committees googling applicants is extremely troubling for a reason only alluded to by other posts. Not only do things one writes onself show up, but also things others have written. I was the target of a wonderful little post on noindoctrination.org, a right-wing site dedicated to rooting out evil leftists in academia. It contains a review of an adjunct class I taught, and needless to say, it is not flattering. Guess what. It shows up on page one of my google display, albeit after publications. If one takes the time to actually go to the comments concerning the class, they are pretty ludicrous, filled with profanity, hyperbolic claims, lies, and bad grammar. But will a job committee take the time to read the comments? Even if they do, how do they know the review contains factual inaccuracies and completely mischaracterizes what I taught?

Two things. First, remember google is unfiltered information, so we should treat what we see on it with more than a few grains of salt. Second, I am truly upset now that I know people google during job searches. What would people do if they were in my situation?

thanks

Of course I went to check out Google and had few surprises -- mostly conference presentations. Two things surprised me though. One was an email sent to me by a friend apparently from an archived list that SHE'S on -- it was a job ad and not quite something that I was qualified for. It would really skew the impression at my campus interview next week! hmmm. The other listing was an email I'd sent more than five years ago on another archived list. Not sure why that posting appeared when others don't.

ps. this weekend someone suggested looking up "failure" on google and noting the first two listings. I'll be using that in class this semester when my students claim google as a reliable source.

"One was an email sent to me by a friend apparently from an archived list that SHE'S on -- it was a job ad and not quite something that I was qualified for. It would really skew the impression at my campus interview next week! hmmm."

I'm not one for gratuitous optimism in matters relating to academic employment, but I honestly don't think you should give this another thought. It would be too absolutely nutty to hold it against you that a friend once sent you an email about a job.

Good luck with your interview!

Well, googling myself brings up publications, conference talks, and a half dozen of my eighteenth-century forebears (I share with my namesakes a faintly puritanical forename + quite rare surname). I bet most hiring committees take a dim view of D.A.R. eligibility, alas.

On the bright side, the genealogy sites are clogging up the web far faster than I can get my foot in my mouth...

I have (quite happily) left the academy behind me now, but there is someone with the same first and last name as mine who is a researcher in my subfield and has tenure at a tier one university and a publication list to die for. Maybe a googling gone awry explains my relative success on the job market.

False positives, linger on!

If you call yourself Jones or "Brown" you can put some great nicknames in front like "Capability" and "Chicken". Names like that never sound any good with more elaborate surnames.

Oddly enough, with a relatively rare last name, there are three people of my generation and three of earlier generations with the same first and last name as me. Of course, Asian Studies is a big field, especially when you include applied work in the field and count Iran as Asian.

Any manager who's posting comments on a weblog about how they're Googling people sounds like they have it together; it's no less than a good faith research effort, especially in today's internet-driven world. I would be shocked if they didn't. As a side effect, now that my website is the first hit for my name on Google, I can depend on Google to lead them to the doorstep I wish them to arrive at first.

I trust that a good hiring manager will recognize content from the past and move on -- or, if they feel it needs to be addressed, ask me directly about it. If I'm confronted with "What's this post you wrote about hiring managers back in 2004, anyways?", I'll happily re-read the article, talk about what I said, and move on. I'm not going to think about hiring managers every time I post a comment somewhere, though; if they take something I say out of context and hold it up and tell me I'm a bad person, at least I have advance warning that the HR department is corrupt.

Interestingly, posting this under my real name takes courage; someday, some hiring manager will probably see it and go "Are you threatening me?!" and throw me out. Such it goes, I guess.

As an interesting aside, try searching for "Posted by Richard Soderberg", with quotes; you'll find a stack of Movable Type posts (such as this one) where I've left comments.

Folks, this is the Age of Google. Nothing gets past Google on the Internet. It's a little flabbergasting that *any* of you are surprised that information about you might show up--especially if you blog. If that's the case, use a pseduonym. There are ways to avoid having your real name show up in the DNS records, such as having your ISP/web host company do it for you.

Also, if you Google folks you might be interviewing with, why is it such a shock that a search committee might Google you? In academe, at least, I think this audience is sophisticated enough to know that Google provides a good source of information, but one that would need to be fleshed out in more context.

Of course, perhaps I'm in the minority here. I've been Googling myself since 1999...

I have blogged on this subject and I can say that the best way to control what is on Google about you can be controlled by blogging - blogs are well represented on Google and your own blog is likely to feature highly. Us his to your advantage like Robert Scoble did to give potential employers more info about yourself. It's a great tool for jobhunting.