Russell Conwell Center
Facilitator: Holly Drutarovsky, Academic
Coach
• How you present yourself online can literally make or break
your professional career.
• If you do not understand how to represent yourself virtually,
your competition who knows how to strategically represent
themselves online will get the job before you, even if you are
both equally qualified.
• Even in college, you are expected to act as a young
professional, because others are looking at you right now as a
potential employee! This means you must be aware of your
virtual presentation of yourself starting NOW.
• These sites portray who you are to the rest of the online world.
• Every time you post something, be aware of the image you are
creating of yourself. Whether good or bad, you are sending a
message of who you are and you want it to be good!
• Do not post photos of yourself and your friends with your red
solo cups - this could be a HUGE turn off to potential employers
for internships and future jobs. Keep your photos classy.
• Post your successes and achievements; you can never go wrong
with those.
Have you heard of the teenage girl who recently made an
extremely disrespectful comment about President Obama?
• She tweeted something that seemingly threatened the President.
• She likely did not truly mean what she said, but she is now being
investigated by the Secret Service.
• Because of one careless tweet, this young woman has created a
reputation and image that will hurt her future job and school pursuits.
• This information will also be easily available to the public for the rest of
her life (imagine what her children will think about it)!
• Check out this article to read more about the story:
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2012/09/08/20120908PNI09
08-wir-ohio-obama-tweet-assassination-teenager-investigation.html
A recent study looked at the statistics of employers who look at
potential employee’s Social Networking pages during the hiring
process.
• They found that 91% of employers DO look at candidates’
pages!
• This means that you are almost guaranteed to be screened through your
personal online social media accounts prior to even being considered for
the job!
• Here is a website to check out “Job Screening with Social
Networks” to see what exactly employers are looking at when
they find your pages:
http://mashable.com/2011/10/23/how-recruiters-use-socialnetworks-to-screen-candidates-infographic/
• If you are worried about what you did to present yourself in the
past affecting you now, do not worry!
• Delete, un-like, or un-tag yourself from images, posts, or pages
that could be considered rude, vulgar, inappropriate, or
immature.
• Change your settings so that you are not able to be searched.
• Change your privacy settings so that anyone
you do not want investigating your personal
life is unable to see what you do online.
• This is a VITAL skill for anyone who
is interested in any kind of
professional career (meaning YOU)!
• You should understand e-mail
etiquette both now during your
college career, and later when you
are applying for jobs and have a
job where you need to interact with
your colleagues and supervisors.
1. Use the Subject Line to write a few words that will give the
receiver an idea of what your e-mail entails.
2. Include in the Body of your e-mail:
• A line greeting the person you are e-mailing.
• Your name and any relevant information about yourself the person will
need (if it is a professor or someone that you do not regularly e-mail, this
is crucial)!
• A concise description of why you are e-mailing them (include why you
need to talk to them, any questions you might have, and any other
relevant information pertaining to the reason you are e-mailing them).
• A closing line (using a ‘goodbye’ or ‘thank you’ statement followed by your
name)
• Ex. “Best, Name”, “Thank you for your time, Name”, etc.
• Spellcheck!
• Do NOT use “texting language”, such as LOL, BTW, R, U, etc.
• Write out your words, don’t EVER use LOL or anything similar.
• Keep it concise – make sure to keep it short and to the point
without excluding relevant information.
• Save the jokes for when you meet with someone in-person
• It can be extremely difficult to tell when someone is joking when you are
not face to face, and you certainly do not want to offend anyone or come
off as rude in an e-mail!
• Eliminate the “smileys”
• It can become annoying and unprofessional when you use them. 
• Capitalize proper nouns and beginnings of sentences, and end
sentences with a punctuation mark. Also, NO run-on sentences.
• If you decide to send out a mass e-mail to a class you are in…
•
•
•
•
MAKE SURE to remember all of your points the FIRST time.
Include the CLASS NAME somewhere in the e-mail.
Be specific!
DO NOT abuse this, and use it as a LAST RESOURCE!
• Going to your professor’s office hours is much more beneficial!!!
• If you receive a mass e-mail, only reply to the person who sent
it (unless it is important for the whole group to know about what
you are saying).
• When you are text messaging a peer, professor, co-worker,
employer, or anyone that you do not know extremely well,
follow the same guidelines from the previous slide on what to
remember when e-mailing.
• MAKE SURE you are absolutely certain that someone is okay
with receiving text messages before you text them
• Some people find it very unprofessional and rude if you text them when
they specifically asked or told you to call them.
• If you are unsure, calling is always the best option!
• The same rules apply here as they do to e-mailing and text
messaging.
• If there is a chat room session, do not keep sending short 1-5
word responses! It can get annoying really quickly.
• Instead, try to gather all of your thoughts before hitting the send button.
Not everyone is who they say
they are! But you aren’t in Junior
High, so how does this apply to
you?
• Saying things that could
potentially get you in trouble
will be easily accessible to
others looking to get you in
trouble.
• This means you should be VERY
aware of what you are saying
and the potential risks of
saying something.
• You do not want anything negative coming up with a simple
search engine like Google.
• Google is such an accessible way to find out more about a
person, that it is almost certain your potential employers or
anyone wishing to know more about you will Google you! For
Example:
• If you Google yourself and your Linkedin account page along with a
recent scholarship you won show up, this is great!
• You are presented as a young professional with aspirations and
motivation
• If you Google yourself and pictures from last month’s party come up, you
should do everything possible to get them taken off Google. In order to
get a negative result off Google, Google how to un-Google yourself.
• In general, you CANNOT take it back!
• This means that if you write, post, text, or comment on something online
you really need to be okay with what you said. You also need to be
aware of how this might affect you and others who have the same and
dissimilar opinions.
• Be responsible, ALWAYS!
• If you do not behave appropriately online, you will not be respected by
the people who matter. Of course, your friends might think you are cool,
but that potential employer will definitely not. You may even regret it in
the near future among friends and family!