<p>It seems to be a trend with my daughter’s college friends to have a website address on their resumes which expand their paper resumes. (such as <a href=“http://www.yourname.com”>www.yourname.com</a>) They are really dynamic and super interesting, but I am concerned about the information that is publicly available. No one puts their phone number on there or anything else, but everything else is there…their clubs, courses, GPAs, travels relevant to the jobs they seek. They are all done pretty nicely and the suggestion is it keeps employers from stalking social media. </p>
<p>I registered fullname.com domains for each of my kids but I set them up to merely reroute to their respective public LinkedIn profiles. In both cases that gives detailed information as to employment and education history – so it does get employers onto social media – but in the case of LinkedIn it may be that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. (The main reason I registered the fullname.com domains was to make sure that no one else could get them – we all have found people with identical first/last names to our own via Facebook, and so the domain registration was a way of laying claim to our own names.)</p>
<p>There IS a lot of background info exposed that way - but the whole point of LinkedIn is to build a network of professional contacts to help employers and employment-seekers. </p>
<p>It may be more or less important in certain industries. I was surprised recently when I was invited to a meeting with a small group of professionals, and then later on could find only one on LinkedIn. Not a big deal - but I essentially use LinkedIn to cement these new contacts. That is, if I meet someone professionally, instead of hanging onto their business card I’d rather make the online connection – a lot easier for me if I want to find them or connect later on. </p>
<p>@nrdsb4. We have had our kid’s “name” domains for about 5 years. Just go to Godaddy and do a search for <a href=“http://www.yourkidsname.com”>www.yourkidsname.com</a> and it will let you know if it available. It costs about $9-12 a year to have it.</p>
<p>I do web site management for a living, so I’ve probably got my name associated in one way or another with at least 75 different domain names. The availability of the format FirstnameLastname.com is going to depend on how common the name is – but if you can’t get the .com extension you could always try alternate extensions like .org, .net, .us – or .name, which is specifically intended for people who want to use their own names. </p>