We have this wonderful new tool right now called google, and who among us hasn't googled themselves. Heck, I googled myself this afternoon, and it's not as dirty as you could make it.

Google her? I don't even know her.

But some employers are turning to google to dig up "dirt" on potential employees. You see, google has a spider that indexes websites and collects all mentions of people with your name.

Try it right now. I did, and found out that Chris Lowry is a basketball coach at my alumni (UALR), a millionaire real estate agent in Boca Raton (about an hour south of me), a doctor in Atlanta, and a couple hundred others.

I like to think of these guys as different paths my life could have took if I'd made a different decision, a la SLIDING DOORS.

But I didn't find any dirt on me, nor did I look too hard, but the potential is there. What if someone had an axe to grind and wrote an official looking nasty article about me, and it got indexed and then googled.

An employer might choose to belive it and base their decision on that info.

The great thing about the internet is how empowering it is. It also opens up a brand new world of information sharing, and we're going to have to learn how to adapt and deal with it.

One of the things you can do to fight the tirades against you, if they even exist, is to write a proself article. Yes, you can engage in self love, and build a site (or it could be a blog, or a page) that extolls the virtue of you.

Go on, google lowrychris and see what I mean.

A self site that champions all of your positive points could counteract any negative information on the internet about you.

Now if we could just tackle those dumb credit reports the exact same way.