Mirrors reflect, and mirrors distort, and the Web is perhaps the greatest mirror of them all. If you’re interested at all in your professional image, you’d better start acting like a recruiter and research your own online persona. You may find that your reflection is crystal clear… but then again, you could run into some ugly distortions. Look at these recent statistics as interpreted by one of our favorite blogs, Cheezhead, that show how regularly employers look in on your online persona:

A recent survey from CareerBuilder found that 45 percent of employers use social networking sites to research job candidates, an increase from 22 percent last year. An additional 11 percent plan to start using social networking sites for screening. Of the respondents who do conduct online searches and background checks on job seekers, 29 percent use Facebook, 26 percent use LinkedIn and 21 percent use MySpace. About 11 percent said they search blogs, while 7 percent follow candidates on Twitter.

Wow: 45%, up from last year’s 22%. That number more than doubled, so this clearly an area for jobseekers to be aware of. LinkedIn shouldn’t be a problem — it’s a businesslike place, and most people behave there — but lots of people let their hair down on MySpace and Facebook. Hint: potential employers don’t want to see you looking drunk, sexy, or silly! Check out our tips at the end of the post for doing damage control on your social networking persona. Research Tools from the "Deep Web" While you're researching yourself, there are some interesting new candidates in the “online mirror” space. One notable site is pipl.com, which has been billed by TechCrunch as “so good it will scare your pants off.” Pipl uses the “deep Web” to search for results on people that you will never see using Google. The reason for this is that Google ranks pages by their importance as judged by how many pages link TO them. The deep Web uncovers Web pages that NOTHING links to. Check out what the TechCrunch reporter had to say:

It’s so good it’ll probably scare some people’s pants off when they see what information it is able to — legally — drudge up. It produces not only links to all of your profiles on social networks like Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn, blog mentions, and photos on Flickr. It finds mentions of your name in public records, including property records, SEC filings, and birth databases. It also finds e-mail addresses and summarizes “quick facts” about the person... Obviously, Pipl is designed for people search by name, but it also just debuted the ability to search emails, usernames and by reverse phone number lookup. The results page is designed as a “one page report” that categorizes information in an easy to read manner.

Pipl looks scary good for recruiters, and just plain scary for anyone with anything they are hoping to hide. Our final entry of note is the most artistic and subjective of all the Web portrayals: it is an art installation called “Personas” hosted by MIT. Simply visit the site, enter your name, and let Personas go to work pulling up details from the deep Web. The information it pulls up is uncanny. It then fills out a graph showing all the components that your persona is identified with. Here, for example, is a Personas report on RiseSmart's own founder and CEO, Sanjay Sathe:

It's a really interesting and beautiful way to create a portrait of oneself. Honing Your Online Image Tips on monitoring and controlling your online "reflection":

• Keep good watch on your image. You can be sure prospective employers will, in this age of transparency. Be careful with social networks, but never forget about the deep Web either.
• Cultivate multiple online personas: at least one serious, professional persona associated with your legal name (JaneDoeMarketingPro, for instance), and another with a more obscure nickname known only to your personal friends. Keep rigid control over the “pro” account and keep it well separated from your fun (and disposable) nickname account.
• Figure out if there are any troublemakers with a similar name to yours, and begin the process of differentiating yourself by using a middle initial or variation on your name — even emphasizing your geographic location (Jane from California) or self-branding information (Jane the Marketing Pro) would be helpful.
• Remember that images "deleted" from social networks are often still there after you have deleted them. Search "permanently delete photos from <site>" to research the particulars. And if you need to kill off a Facebook account where you've embarrassed yourself, don't merely "deactivate" the account — DELETE it. Read here for instructions on how to completely delete an account.

Have fun out there, but don't forget that an image or comment posted on the Web can last forever. Don't do things that you will regret when it comes time to explain it to an HR professional.