I have occasionally been troubled by non-payers, but there are ways of sniffing them out in advance – they are the ones that say what they want from you, but then seem to go all vague when money is mentioned.

My daughter talks a lot online and in myspace. I’ve told her repeatedly that I know she’s a teen — but eventually she’ll have a job and her employer could look for her stuff online without any regard to her age at the time of posting.

Let’s hope employers will overlook the typical antics of teens. I know many teens who grow up to be fine young adults after high school graduation.

I’m feeling very…exposed at the moment, and a little paranoid.

Yes, I think that whereas what you say in day-to-day conversation will only be recalled by people who were there at the time, and then only if they can actually remember it, which frequently they don’t, what you say online is there forever, (almost). So you do have to be careful about what you say, and not get too carried away in the heat of the moment.

You also have to be a bit careful about the amount of personal information you leave online. I ran into an old friend on the train, and he told me that he used MySpace. So later on I took at look at his MySpace page – well, up there he had his annual income, his personal circumstances, his photo, etc. I don’t think I would go quite that far! All he needs to do is to put his address up there, and the burglars may well come calling, looking to reap some spoils of that fine income of his.

When online, I think it’s always a case of, think before you write.

Most of the time I don`t bother with being “anon”, though I do use different names to differentiate between blogs, but I link to my personal blog from my business one and vice versa. My thinking is that if people want to find out more about me, they can, so I might as well make it easy!

I found sites I forgot I had signed up for. That happened after I changed email addresses after going from dial-up to DSL, and I forgot those sites had my old email address. Those sites were minor though. I even found something I wrote over ten years ago. It wasn’t a professional piece; it was about a medical condition from a patient’s perspective. That was my first online writing. I’ve never posted on blogs and forums much so that doesn’t come back to haunt me. If you have a long Internet history, it’s worth “googling” yourself.

I hope an employer wouldn’t have THAT much time to waste but… well, I guess I don’t really need that link there either!

There is no formula for how to find the best candidate for the job. I guess it is hit or miss no matter how much time and effort and money you put into checking out potential applicants. While doing all this checking may eliminate potential trouble makers, it doesn’t mean that the person hired will work out either.

There are several Deborah Ngs online. One is a child chess prodigy and another is a writer for CNN and there are even more than that.. We do have to hope employers choose the correct Deborah Ng when Googling for information.

Many companies, About.com for instance, do background checks and Internet searches for the people who work for them. In most cases it’s to make sure they’re not hiring criminals but sometimes they stumble upon an old forum or blog post and think…hmmm…do I really want to hire this person?

The same with the real world, many human resources departments have people on staff who look up potential employees online to make sure they’re not the type of people who will spend the day online social networking or complaining or giving away company secrets.

It used to be businesses took their chances when hiring – hoping their employees told the truth on their applications. With the Internet they can take the background check a step further.

I believe there is a certain amount of anonymity online. Yesterday I Googled my user name for WAHM and I find only two entries out of 300 I posted. Both offered advice to writers. Some companies delete forum posts from their servers because it is expensive to keep storing all that data.

I recently hired someone who gave me one name on her resume and another variation on the Paypal invoice. I Googled both names. The resume name came up blank. For the Paypal name the very first entry (and most ertries for the first 2 pages) told me that 10 years ago she was a stripper and phone sex operator. I know it was the same person because she wrote about doing these jobs to pay her tuition at 123 University. There were other details also that confirmed it was the same person I hired.

I think people have more to worry about than not getting jobs due to online posts. Other info about your life such as past occupations or public info about criminal background, bankruptcy, foreclosure, etc. can also be found online. Since many people are so judgmental some employers will always find a reason not to hire you.

Funny about the Suite 101. I struggled with whether or not I should write for them to get my work up online when starting out. While I make little money I have to say it hasn’t been a waste of time. A wellness company found my profile on there and I now write for their ezine – my best, highest paying gig yet!

My name is quite common. In addition to a famous Canadian skier, there’s a playmate w/my name, too. Let’s hope potential employers can tell the difference.

It was highly offensive and I have no idea how my name was attributed to it. I had no content on there, I doubt there were any linkbacks. I emailed Technorati and never got a response but I think they must have done something because it hasn’t popped up in my search anymore (or I have so much content now that it has moved down the google chain), but I do find lots of other things that are not related to me at all as well, and most of them show up as Technorati.