The Science of Google Web Presence: Can You Really Control What Shows Up Under Your Name?

By Emily Bennington for Monster.com

We’ve heard the message — loud and clear — that employers are using social media and Google to screen candidates. But what if you don’t like what they’ll find when they Google you? For example, remember that snarky comment you made on The Huffington Post? It’s not so funny when it ranks No. 2 on a search for your name. Alternatively, what if you’ve been in trouble with the law? Or, as one of my students did, you share a name with a porn star? {Read the full article here.}

The Young and the Clueless

By Stephanie Kanowitz for the Washington Post Express

Graduation and internship season is upon us, and that means thousands of new employees are joining the workforce, ready to make their marks. But behaviors that drew no attention in school could trip up new hires before they start climbing the corporate ladder. {Read the full article here.}

Students: Now is Your Time to GO BIG

By Emily Bennington for The Huffington Post

Since college is a notoriously formative period, NOW is your time (i.e. in the cozy cocoon of youth and higher education) to learn how to think big and take strategic risks. Note: This isn’t a license to approach random strangers in a bar or to be reckless; it’s a call to action to make something great happen while you’re still relatively free and mobile. It’s a challenge to stop thinking, “I could never do that,” and see what happens when you try. {Read the full article here.}

Making the Leap to the Big Leagues

By Jonnelle Marte, Wall Street Journal

Emily Bennington recalls having to adjust to a new pace and reporting structure when in 2008 she went from working for a marketing firm with 10 employees in Charleston, W.Va., to handling the regional marketing for Dixon Hughes PLLC, a large accounting firm with more than 1,200 employees. {Read the full article here.}

Financial Tips for Grads

Emily Bennington on ABC’s Money Matters

Fired to Hired  w/ Tory Johnson

By Tory Johnson for ABC News

As the Class of 2010 enters the workforce, they need every advantage to not only get hired, but to stay employed.  Emily Bennington, author of Effective Immediately: How to Fit In, Stand Out, and Move Up at Your First Real Job, has a few specific tips for career newbies who are ready to impress from day one. {Read the full article here.}

Authors Give Advice to New Grads on How to Stand Out on the Job

By Eric Eyre

Marketing executives Emily Bennington and Skip Lineberg started writing “Effective Immediately” in 2003. It took them two years to find an agent, another three years to find a publisher, and 18 additional months to get the book finished, printed and distributed. “I’m the proud owner of more than 50 rejection letters,” Bennington said. “But I never once thought about quitting.” {Read the full article here.}

Effective Immediately: How to Prepare for Your First Job

By Jordan Sakowitz for BrandYourself.com

College prepares us for a lot of things.  How to live on a tight budget, clean vomit out of a rug, rig up a beer pong table using everyday household items like MacGyver, oh, and even perform feats of math with no apparent real world applications and other questionably useful academic niceties. Yeah, being a fresh college grad, I can tell you firsthand that this is what $200K in tuition buys these days. {Read the full article here.}

Social Media and Hiring: When Potential Employees are Searching YOU

By Emily Bennington for Monster.com

Raise your hand if you’ve ever heard of or experienced a good social media cautionary tale. You know, the one where Potential Employer A searches for Candidate B online, only to be confronted with an image of him mooning a crowd during Spring Break or holding an arsenal of weapons? {Full article available here.}

How to Ruin Your Work Reputation Slowly

By Liz Wolgemuth, US News and World Report

“What I find is that most people undermine their credibility in little ways and they do it because they don’t mind their ‘-ilities,’” says Emily Bennington, coauthor of Effective Immediately: How to Fit In, Stand Out, and Move Up at Your First Real Job. Think punctuality, dependability, humility, accountability. “It’s not so much that they make these major mistakes … What they do is that they slowly chip away at it.” {Full article available here.}

10 Job-Search Mistakes of New College Grads

By Charles Purdy, Yahoo Hot Jobs

Emily Bennington, the author of Effective Immediately: How to Fit In, Stand Out, and Move Up at Your First Real Job, says, “This isn’t the time to sit back and be casual in your approach. Create a hit list of five to ten target companies, and really utilize your network to locate an ‘in’ at each.” {Full article available here.}

The Worst Career Advice Continually Given to College Seniors

By Emily Bennington for The Huffington Post

It’s graduation season and you know what that means, right? More unsolicited career counsel from people like me. Does it ever just start to sound like white noise? If so, tune it out. That’s right. There’s really nothing new you can learn at this point, and most of the advice is just warmed-over versions of the same old stuff you’ve been reading for years anyway. {Full article available here.}

Use Social Media to Learn About Your Company’s Next Hire

By Emily Bennington for Monster.com

We all know it’s expensive to make a bad hire. At best, you’re out the time and resources it took to get the person up to speed. At worst, you’re putting out fires in their wake. The good news is that, thanks to technology, employers now have unprecedented access to a virtual treasure chest of information on candidates, making hiring decisions much easier. In fact, these days almost half of businesses are using online tools to screen potential employees and that number will only continue to rise. {Full article available here.}

Personal Branding Interview: Emily Bennington

By Dan Schawbel

Today I spoke with Emily Bennington, coauthor of Effective Immediately: How to Fit In, Stand Out, and Move Up at Your First Real Job. Emily is a weekly contributor to the Personal Branding Blog, and in this interview, she talks about how she was inspired to write her book, her experience in the publishing process, why new graduates need career advice, and her future goals. {Full article available here.}

Does Reality TV Make Us Stupid?

Recommended reading: Effective Immediately

By Heather Huhman

To move up in the workplace, you must get noticed. To get noticed, you must be distinctive. To be distinctive, you must be known for results. In other words, you must be “Effective Immediately.” {Full article available here.}

New Book Alert: Effective Immediately

By Leslie Whitaker

Co-authors Emily Bennington and Skip Lineberg, two influential bloggers and speakers in the business world, have written Effective Immediately (Ten Speed Press, 2010), a valuable guide for recent graduates who, as the subtitle says, want to “Fit In, Stand Out, and Move Up at Your First Real Job.” As an instructor to college students majoring in business, I have learned that most of them lean towards taking the fitting in approach, when in fact the combination strategy of fitting in and standing out — deftly selecting times to blend in or make compromises, and yet seizing the opportunities to be creative or call attention to yourself — is actually one of the surest roads to success. {Full article here.}

Wanted: College Educated Male Leaders (Is That Too Much To Ask?)

By Emily Bennington for The Huffington Post

Talk about Venus rising. First, the American Council on Education reports that women are holding steady at 57% of college enrollment. Then, the Department of Labor announces that women have tipped the scales on the job, making up 51% of the workforce for the first time ever. Naturally, it was only a matter of time before one led to the other but, seriously, what’s going on with boys today? {Full article available here.}

UC Grad School Students Study Social Media

By Eric Eyre

 The idea came to Adam Craft while riding an escalator in Shanghai. The escalator handrail was dirty, coated with germs. Craft, part of a group of University of Charleston graduate business school students who studied in China last summer, developed a device that cleans escalator handrails with ultraviolet light. To spread the word about his germ-zapping device and new business, Sanitouch Systems, he turned to social media – Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs. He learned how to use those Internet marketing tools in a new course that’s part of UC’s Masters of Business Administration and Leadership Program. {Full article available here.}

2010 Young Guns

By Jennifer Nugent

For 11 years now, West Virginia Executive has been highlighting an elite class of West Virginians. Every year, hundreds of nominations are sorted through and narrowed down to a small group of 10 to 12 passionate, intelligent, determined, forward-thinking individuals who share three common traits: success in their careers, a desire to give back to their communities and, above all, a deep-rooted resolve to ensure that West Virginia’s best days are not behind her but are, in fact, just ahead. {Full article available here}

Just a Girl: Women Executives in the Mountain State

by Emily Bennington

Nationally, we control 85 percent of consumer purchases. Our businesses are outperforming in the recession, and we earn six out of 10 advanced degrees awarded today. So why do we make up a mere 3 percent of the CEOs in Fortune 500 companies, 17 percent of all members of the U.S. House of Representatives and only 14 percent of all state governors? {Full article available here}