Recently friends of mine described being worried about their online presence in relation to sites like MySpace, YouTube, and Facebook. Their concern is that if an employer sees their public profile on one of these sites they might think badly of them and then not be inclined to hire them.

Kathy Sierra does well explaining part of this problem in her post Knocking the exuberance out of employees. Is it possible to hire bold, creative, smart, passionate, and independent people who live quiet lives of desperation at home?

Seth Godin relates somewhat to this issue with his writing on Change Agent where he describes the problems of hiring competent instead of incompetent people. Competent people are boring, they handle problems in the same way every time; but competent people are reliable and often in many companies this value carries more weight than someones ability to be innovative, adapt, change and essentially rock the boat.

So sure, an incompetent creative person might not have a profile on myspace, facebook, and other sites. But should they worry about the backlash of employers discovering that their lives aren’t as professional and responsible as their work? I don’t think so. And while posting pictures of yourself doing illegal acts is pure idiocy, actually it’s called “evidence”, having pictures of you and your friends having fun and possibly acting stupid probably means you’re a real person.

Some people have said it’s because I work in the software industry that you can get away with this kind of attitude. I think it’s having this kind of attitude that keeps me out of these other crappy companies and industries. I’d rather people were real about their lives and I wouldn’t want to take part in an organization that didn’t feel the same way.

So if you want to see the online profile of me it’s all here in my mugshot, feel free check it out. Behind this chilling professional corporate persona… there is someone who has probably signed up for too many accounts. In a coming release there will be even more of what I do online to look at, but for now you’ll get the idea.