Perri Nelson's Website 

Search engines

Listening to the radio on the way to work yesterday morning I heard a brief ad for one of the morning shows. The show in question advertises this way regularly, but I never know whether to bother listening or not, because they talk about what they'll talk about "next time" on their show. Sometimes they run the same ad a few days in a row.

I'm left to wonder, did they talk about what they said they would already and I missed it? Or are they going to talk about it today?

Anyway, this time they said they were going to talk about college students seeking jobs and employers that know how to use search engines like Google or Yahoo. I missed the show, being on a conference call with developers from India and project managers from Seattle and Redmond (hey, you have to pay the bills too right).

Still the topic was interesting to me, so I thought about it a bit.

The decisions we make can have a profound impact on our career choices sometimes. Other times, you'd think that they wouldn't.

Today the Internet is used by hundreds of millions of people in the United States alone. That's a very large segment of the population.

There are all sorts of sites out their too. We all know about blogs, news sites, search engines, book stores, shopping sites, and general entertainment sites. There's another type of site that's very popular, especially with the younger netizen – the social networking site.

Sites like Linked In, Facebook, and Myspace come to mind. Linked In is a professional networking site, generally useful for maintaining business contacts. Facebook and Myspace on the other hand are much more social in nature.

They exist for people to share information about themselves, and to play on the Internet with their friends. Facebook has a pile of little "applications" that allow you and your friends to throw food at each other, write on each other's walls, and share electronic gifts, among other things. Myspace lets you post pictures, create really horrible layouts (AiN't It KeWl?), have dozens or hundreds of contacts post on your page and even blog.

So what does this have to do with potential career paths?

Well that depends on what you put on your myspace page. Post drunken photographs of yourself like a lot of college students to. Post stories about your (current) drug abuse like some young people I know. Share stories and pictures of your perversions like some others. Why not? It's only the Internet!

It astounds me the sort of things that people will post on the Internet. Things they'd never want printed in newspapers on the front page will end up on their myspace page. Things they'd never admit to in front of a policeman or in court are photographed and put on display for all to see.

Eventually though, these kids will want gainful employment. It's one thing to write about the things in your past that you've learned from. It's another entirely to write about the things you do today that you'll be ashamed of tomorrow.

The young, hip, Internet savvy kids of today aren't the only ones that know how to use the Internet. Employers do too. So, I leave you with a bit of advise for the young ones…

The Internet is a cool tool. Openness and honesty about one's life is wonderful. Live your life so you won't be ashamed and you won't have to worry about people discovering your improprieties by finding your name in a Google search. Otherwise don't post anything online that you don't want traced back to you, especially things that will embarrass you in later life.

On a side note, last week I was going to go to Spokane to visit the in-laws. That didn't happen, I spent the weekend at home with a massive headache. Then I got into a coding frenzy — I finally finished my simulation of a primitive computer built entirely from simulated relays, toggle switches and light bulbs Thursday night. I'll post it online sometime later in the week, when I've cleaned up the code a bit. NOW I'm going to Spokane. It's time to go pack! I'll be back tomorrow