Should your career record be public or private?

Start private, then share on purpose

Keep your career record private by default, because it is a working document. It holds drafts, doubts, figures you have not checked and plans your manager has not heard. Share chosen parts with chosen people, for a reason you can name.

You can make something public later. You cannot make it private again once someone has read or copied it, or a search engine has saved it. Switching it off stops new readers, not the ones who already saw it.

Employers do look you up

If you have a public page, assume an employer may read it before you meet. In 2018 The Harris Poll surveyed 1,012 US hiring and HR managers for CareerBuilder, a recruitment company. Seven in ten said they used social networking sites to research candidates. Of those, 57 per cent had found content that led them not to hire someone.

The survey is US data from 2018. It was paid for by a company that sells hiring services, so weigh it with that in mind. It asked about social media, not CV pages. Read it as a sign that employers look, and that what they find can count against you.

The reader of a public page is often making a decision about you, and you will not be there to explain the context. Most of what costs people a chance is not scandal. It is a half-finished claim, a tone written for friends, or a detail that was true two jobs ago. A private record gives you room to get those right first.

What goes wrong when a record is public too early

Take a fictional deputy head of science who has started to look at headship. She writes down her reasons, the posts she is watching and a note that her current school's timetable is wearing her out. Each line is fair in a private document. Read by her headteacher on a public page, the same lines look like a resignation letter.

Early publishing tends to cause four problems:

• Your current employer learns you are thinking of leaving before you have decided.
• Claims you have not yet backed up with evidence get read as if they were final.
• Colleagues, pupils or clients appear in your examples without having agreed to it.
• Old versions can stay in caches and screenshots long after you have edited them.

A record is for you; a profile is for a reader

It helps to treat these as two different things. The record is where you write what happened, including the parts that went badly, what you were paid and why you left. It can be blunt because nobody else reads it.

A profile is an edited selection from the record, written for one kind of reader. A CV for a school, a page for a recruiter and a portfolio of teaching resources are three different profiles. Each draws on the same record and leaves most of it out.

When the two are one document, you end up writing the record for an imagined audience. You leave out the failures and the doubts, which are the parts that help you most when you plan your next move.

What should stay private for good

Some things belong in your record and never on a public page, whoever asks. These are the usual ones.

• Salary history and what you would accept, which weakens your position if a future employer can see it.
• Health, caring responsibilities and the personal reasons behind a move or a gap.
• Anything that identifies pupils, patients or clients, even in an example you are proud of.
• Frank notes on former managers and colleagues.
• Your home address, date of birth and personal phone number.

Three questions before you share anything

Before a section leaves private, answer three questions. Who exactly will read this? What decision will it help them make? What happens if someone else reads it instead? If you cannot answer the first two, the section is not ready to share.

Back to the deputy head. She keeps the full record private. She sends a recruiter a link to a CV page showing her roles, results and training, and nothing about her reasons for looking. She makes one section public: articles on how her department changed its practical work, which she is happy for anyone to find.

That gives her three audiences and three settings. The recruiter sees what helps them put her forward. Other science teachers can find her writing. Her headteacher sees nothing new until she chooses to have that conversation.

Check your settings when your situation changes

Sharing settings tend to be set once and then forgotten. Review them when you start applying, accept a job or leave one. Also review them when a link has done its work. A link you sent a recruiter last spring does not need to work next spring.

Search your own name in a private browser window every few months. Check what appears, and whether it is what you would choose to show a stranger making a decision about you.

A private folder on your own computer works on this principle. OTO Careers keeps your career record private, and each section has its own sharing switch: off, private, anyone with the link, or public. Hiring-team discovery is off unless you turn it on, and it only shows what you already share.