You've been Googled

After a period in which all my attention was taken up by exams and business plans, I have finally returned to job hunting. It's very half-heartedly though. I will be working with my thesis supervisor for at least the next couple of months and of course I hope this position will serve as a spring board to my dream career. Still, it would not be wise for me to put all my eggs in one basket. So when a job advert was practically thrown in my lap for which the profile fits me like a glove, I told myself I had to put in an application.

Writing CV's and cover letters is not exactly a hobby of mine. I always wonder what to include and how to phrase it. Of course lying on your CV is a big no-no but where is the line between embellishing and flat-out lying? For safety's sake I tend to be very much on the cautious side thus potentially underselling myself. The alternative is too dangerous to consider seriously. In this information era it is so easy to check facts that you're bound to be found out if you are anything less than truthful. Anybody can do a quick Google search. Especially people like me who keep a blog and are registered on Facebook and Hyves need to be careful. If you put anything potentially embarrassing out there you have to be prepared for the possiblity of a future employer seeing those pictures of you dancing on the table.

Although I am not aware of any particularly incriminating information about myself I have ran a Google search to see what shows up and if, for instance, this blog can be found that way. It looks like my internet presence is pretty much in line with what my CV says about me. It pulls up a rather dull list of scientific references and the minutes of student council meetings. A search for pictures is even duller and shows a crystal structure of the protein I worked with! Nothing to worry about then. Nonetheless, I will continue to be quite careful with the information I make public. I have just heard that my CV passed the first round of scrutiny and that I am invited for a phone interview. I guess I have been Google-approved.