Suzanne Lucas on Reputation Management

Writing at Inc., Suzanne Lucas describes what she learned when a shady talent recruitment site fraudulently attempted to use her name to scam job-seekers.

Probably the most important thing was establishing a clear identity for herself and making it easy to verify:

Image by Sander Sammy, via Unsplash, license.

Be clear about who you are. By taking control of your own personal brand, you'll help people recognize when something don't sound like you.

Make it possible for people to contact you. We discovered this scam when someone contacted [Katrina] Collier and asked, "Is this you?" Someone later reached out to me with the same question. Because we are both -- as is [Dave] Ulrich -- very clear about who we are and what we do, people recognized this as being off. And because we are easy to contact, we heard about it. [bold in original]

In that sense, a strong brand can be part of its own protection. But Lucas also advises setting up something like a Google alert on one's own name since that might help detect such a problem a little quicker.

She also offers advice on what to do when something like this happens.

Although she eventually lists Hire a lawyer, she was fortunate enough not to have to do this. And from her account, it would appear that following her other advice might well spare one that last, expensive step.

-- CAV