ThemeReputation & Presence
CardCard 35 of 66
Questions5 to explore

Online Presence

Your existence on the internet

Your online presence is not just a digital CV: it is an active part of how you are perceived, discovered, and considered.

Most people who are curious about you professionally will look you up before they meet you, or instead of meeting you. What they find, or what they do not find, forms their first impression. Whether you have given any thought to that impression is itself information about you.

Online presence does not require being prolific on social media or maintaining a perfect personal website. It means knowing what is findable about you, having some control over the story it tells, and making sure the things that matter are visible to the people who should see them. For most professionals, a well-tended LinkedIn profile and some trace of your actual work is a reasonable minimum.

At a higher level, some people use their online presence as a genuine professional tool: building an audience, sharing their thinking publicly, creating work that can be discovered. This takes more investment, but can compound significantly over a career. Whether that level makes sense for you depends on your field, your goals, and how much you actually enjoy it.

How to work on it

Practical ways to reflect on and develop this dimension of your working life. How it tends to look at different stages of a career, and where to put your attention.

Early career

Make sure the basics are in order: a professional profile that reflects your current direction, and that your name surfaces something credible and current when searched.

Mid career

Think about whether your online presence reflects where you are now, or where you were five years ago. Updating it deliberately can open doors you do not know are closed.

Building in public

Sharing your thinking or work publicly, through writing, talks, projects, or social posts, is a slow but real way to build reputation and attract interesting opportunities over time.

Manage what you cannot control

Check what comes up when you search your own name. Outdated or unwanted results are not always fixable, but knowing they exist lets you address them directly when the moment calls for it.

Questions to explore

Use these on your own or in a group. There are no right answers, only better conversations.

If someone searched for you right now, what would they find, and would you be happy with that picture?
Is your online presence an accurate reflection of where you are in your career, or does it lag behind?
Are there things you have done or know that are not visible online and should be?
Have you ever had an opportunity come through your online presence, and what made it work?
How much time and energy does it make sense to invest in your online presence given your goals and field?

Things to notice

Treating online presence as a box to check, rather than a living thing, means it tends to fall out of date and give a misleading impression at exactly the moment someone is looking.
Conflating quantity with quality is a common trap: a single strong piece of writing or a well-maintained profile outweighs a scattered stream of activity across six platforms.
Privacy and visibility involve real tradeoffs that are worth thinking through honestly, especially if your work touches sensitive areas or you have reasons to limit your digital footprint.