"How easy were you to find online? Were you happy with what you found? What sort of ‘person’ emerged, and what might other people think about him or her? What did you, or might you, do to address this? How important do you think it is to maintain a professional presence online?"
A quick Google search of 'Nathan Cassidy' leads only to a British comedian of the same name, who apparently won 'Best Show' at the Buxton fringe (I don't even know where Buxton is). This apparently mildly successful comedian's online presence absolutely dominates mine, to the point where I appear nowhere in the first 5 pages of Google's web results. This is certainly not good enough for myself, I may have to visit the Buxton fringe and try to top my namesake.
It's not so bad though, as if I add 'Surrey' to the list of words for my google search the engine provides me with the complete list of my social media profiles on top of my comedian namesake - now nemesis.
My online presence is rather contrasting: my facebook profile is thankfully private so potential employers and collaborators are unable to see into the collection of photos documenting drunken nights out, my twitter account though remains open so people can see my heated debate with other users of the site and from that they can probably guess some strong political leanings which they may or may not agree with, these tweets are of course dispersed amongst a hundred other rewteets of memes which make even my closest of friends question my sense of humour. Thankfully coming before my twitter in the Google results hierarchy is my LinkedIN and researchgate accounts which show off my carefully crafted professional profile and scientific achievements. It is these final two profiles that I would prefer people only saw until they got to know me better, and until then they can even read a scientific paper that I co-authored which somehow pops up quite high within the online results.
