Someone hears your name in a meeting. A colleague recommends you for an opportunity. A conference organizer gets your name from someone who heard you speak. A hiring manager sees your name attached to a project.
What happens next?
There’s a pretty good chance they Google you.
I’ve talked for years about the importance of being “findable,” especially when working with professionals who were looking for their next career opportunity. But being findable isn’t only important when you’re looking for a job. It matters when you’re building a career, growing as a leader, developing your expertise, or simply wanting the right people to understand what you bring to the table.
You can spend years building experience and doing great work, but if someone searches your name and finds very little—or what they find tells a completely different story—you’ve missed an opportunity.
People Are Already Looking You Up
We do it all the time.
Someone mentions a person we don’t know, and within minutes we’re searching their name. We look at LinkedIn. We visit their company bio. We may check their website or see what else comes up.
We’re trying to answer some basic questions: Who is this person? What do they do? What are they known for? Do they know what they’re talking about?
That’s why your online presence matters. Long before you have the opportunity to introduce yourself, something online may already be doing it for you.
The goal isn’t to manufacture an image of yourself or become someone you’re not. It’s to make sure the person people meet online actually reflects the professional you’ve worked hard to become.
What Do You Want to Be Known For?
This is where I’d start.
Google yourself.
Not because we’re feeding our egos, but because you need to know what someone else sees when they searches your name.
Then ask yourself: Does this reflect who I am today and where I’m going next?
Maybe your LinkedIn profile hasn’t been updated in three years. Perhaps your bio still emphasizes work you don’t really want to do anymore. Maybe you’ve developed significant expertise in an area, but there’s absolutely nothing online connecting your name to it.
I’ve experienced this myself. Careers evolve. Mine certainly has. What I wanted people to know me for ten years ago isn’t necessarily what I want them to know me for today.
Your online presence needs to evolve with you.
You Don’t Need to Be Everywhere
This is where people tend to make things harder than they need to be.
Being visible doesn’t mean you need six social media accounts, a YouTube channel, a weekly blog, a podcast, and a complicated website.
You need to show up in the places that make sense for you.
For most professionals, LinkedIn is an obvious place to start. Make sure your profile is current, your photo actually looks like you, and your headline and About section communicate more than your job title.
Then think about where else someone might encounter you professionally. Maybe you’ve been interviewed for an article or podcast. Perhaps you’ve spoken at an industry event, written about your area of expertise, served on a board, received an award, or led an important initiative.
Those things help people understand the bigger picture of who you are and what you bring to your work.
A Personal Website Can Still Be Powerful
I still believe there’s tremendous value in owning a little piece of the internet with your name on it.
Social media platforms change. Algorithms change. Companies disappear. Your website is a space you control.
And it doesn’t have to be complicated.
A simple professional website can introduce who you are, explain what you do, highlight your experience and accomplishments, showcase your work, and give someone an easy way to contact you. If you speak, write, teach, consult, create, serve on boards, or have a body of work that doesn’t fit neatly onto a LinkedIn profile, a website gives you room to show more of it.
The important part isn’t having a fancy website. It’s making sure there’s a reason for it to exist.
If someone lands there, they should quickly understand who you are, what you know, and why it matters.
Show Your Expertise Before You Need the Opportunity
One of the biggest mistakes I see professionals make is waiting until they need something to start thinking about visibility.
They lose a job and suddenly update LinkedIn. They decide they want to speak and realize there’s nothing online showing their expertise. They want a promotion and discover the people making the decision know very little about what they’ve accomplished.
Visibility works much better when you build it before you need it.
Share an idea you’ve learned from your work. Contribute to conversations in your industry. Celebrate what your team has accomplished. Write about something you know well. Speak at an association meeting. Let people see how you think, not just what position you hold.
You don’t need to constantly promote yourself. You simply need to stop keeping everything you know and everything you’ve accomplished invisible.
Take a Look at What People See
Your online presence isn’t your reputation. Your reputation is built through the work you do, the way you treat people, the relationships you build, and how you show up over time.
But your online presence can help people discover that reputation.
So take ten minutes and search your own name. Look at the results as if you know nothing about the person you’re seeing.
Does that person look like who you are today?
Does what you find reflect the expertise you’ve built?
And if the right opportunity showed up tomorrow, would what someone finds online help them understand why you belong in the conversation?
Being findable isn’t about being famous.
It’s about making it easier for the right people to find the person you’ve already worked so hard to become.
Sandy Adams 