Run the search they will run
Open a private window so your own history does not tailor the results, and search your full name in quotation marks, then again with your city, your school and your employer. Check the image results and the first three pages. Then search your email addresses, your phone number and every username you have used since middle school, because old handles connect accounts you thought were anonymous. Note what appears, who controls it and whether it helps or hurts you.
Informal looks and formal checks
Two different things happen in hiring. The informal one is a recruiter typing your name into a search engine and a few social platforms, which is legal, common and unregulated, although an employer may not base a decision on protected traits such as religion, race, pregnancy or disability that a profile reveals. Many states also bar employers from demanding your social media passwords.
The formal one is a background check by an outside company. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the employer needs your written permission first, and if it plans to reject you because of the report it must give you a copy and a chance to dispute errors before the decision is final. Errors are common, particularly records belonging to someone with a similar name, so read the report.
Cleaning up
- Delete or make private anything you control, and close accounts you no longer use rather than abandoning them.
- Untag yourself from other people's photos and ask friends to take down what you cannot.
- Ask a site's owner to remove content about you, since search engines only index what is published.
- Use the search engine's removal request for outdated pages and for exposed personal information such as your home address.
- Opt out of the people-search sites that list your address and relatives, and repeat it twice a year because listings return.
Deleting is not erasing. Screenshots and web archives persist, so the working rule for anything new is that it is permanent and public, whatever the privacy setting says.
Give them something to find
An empty result is not the goal, since it can read as odd for a working adult. A complete professional profile under the exact name on your resume, with a plain headshot, tends to rank first and crowd out the rest.
Tip Set a free search alert on your own name, so that a new mention reaches you by email instead of surfacing for the first time in an interview.
