ClaimID.
by Chris Coyier
Admit it: you’ve googled yourself. They call it “egosurfing”, but in today’s world, you had better be aware of what the search engines are saying about you. If you are applying for a job (especially one technology related) they will read your cover letter and resume, check out your website, and you can bet your bottom dollar they will Google you.
ClaimID is a free web service that allows you to provide a context for those search results. It works by signing up for an account and then using the provided bookmarklet to tag and comment on any website. Those comments get added to your ClaimID page. The obvious use for this is to claim authorship over your sites or to confirm the information on other sites, but ClaimID can also work in the opposite way. If there are search results that are untrue, that relate to a different person with your same name, or otherwise misrepresent you, you can present that on your ClaimID page. Feel free to check out mine.
I could see how this would be very beneficial if your name was John Smith, or worse, George Michael. The trick is actually getting people to your ClaimID page.
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May 22nd, 2006 at 8:37 am
If you are actually linking people to your claimID site for the purpose of getting a job, I would HIGHLY recommend spellchecking your bio entries and the like. For example: reporting on things that are “mearly [sic] side projects … ” As someone who hires web design staff that would be enough for me to put the resume and applicant on the bottom of the pile (sorry Chris).
May 22nd, 2006 at 9:07 am
No need to be sorry. Thanks for the catch.
I agree that poor spelling is a tell for deeper bad craftsmanship. Fortunately, I’m not relying on my claimID site to find me work otherwise I would be in trouble. I copied that little bio spiel from my blog though, where it was also misspelled.
I literally proofread things as part of my day job and never caught that. Doh.
May 22nd, 2006 at 12:16 pm
Chris, Thanks for the mention! We’re excited to see ClaimID on Fresh Arrival..We’re fans of the site! All the best, Fred
May 22nd, 2006 at 3:08 pm
I can’t prove who I am because I don’t have an invitation code. How do I get invited to claim my ID?
May 22nd, 2006 at 5:23 pm
If you enter your email address in the “Request a claimID Invite:” field on the homepage, you should get one fairly quickly. It worked that way for me anyway.
Let me know if you are unable to get one and I’ll see if I can invite you somehow or talk to someone to get you an invite.
May 23rd, 2006 at 4:45 pm
Chris,
ClaimID is a pretty interesting site and the team behind it seems very switched on. It might be a hard concept to get across, as The Week in Tech people definitely didn’t get it!
Steve