Reputation Your search results before a board seat or an executive hire

Executive hiring involves more searching than any other kind, and it happens earlier. A search firm reads your results before the first call, the hiring committee reads them before the shortlist, and a board reads them before the vote, and none of that is formal screening even though it's where most candidates get filtered out. The work that changes it is the same work as always. Timing is what catches people out.

Three searches, not one

The recruiter, the committee and the board all look separately, weeks apart. Fix your results after the first conversation and the first impression is still sitting there, waiting, because the people who read you early are usually the ones deciding whether there's a second round.

The screening report is a separate problem

A background check isn't a Google search, and you don't fix it the same way. Screening companies operate under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which gives you a right to dispute an inaccurate record. That's a stronger position than a website's policy. It's the one route with law behind it.

Pull your own file before anybody else does

You're entitled to your own background file. Reading it is the single most useful hour in this process, because it's where a mismatched record, an old case that should have aged off, or somebody else's history attached to your name actually shows up, and none of that is visible from a search. Our self-opposition checklist covers the request alongside the other three layers.

A dispute under the Fair Credit Reporting Act is a real mechanism, not an appeal to goodwill. When a screening company is carrying something inaccurate, it has an obligation to investigate, and that's a very different conversation from asking an aggregator for a favor.

Old coverage is usually the real obstacle

Most executive candidates don't have a record. They have a first page that stopped keeping up with them. A role from two companies ago, a company that didn't work out, an interview that aged badly, and nothing recent competing with any of it.

That's an outranking job. It takes months. Our outranking guide covers it, and if you start while a search is already running, you've started too late to help that search.

A closed company is not the liability it feels like

Boards have seen ventures fail. Most of them have been part of one. What reads badly is a search result that tells the story without you, or a version of events that doesn't match what you said in the room.

We'd rather be direct about this one than manage it. Our own founder rebuilt his search results after a very public failure. It's on the about page instead of buried. It works because the account is his.

Where to start, and when

Start two or three quarters before you expect to be looking. Removals that have a clean basis can land in days, and the rest runs in months. Our timelines guide has real numbers from our own engagements, not a range.

The whole first two pages as one job is $2,488, one time. It includes a website on a domain you own, the profile set, and both removal services, while a bigger situation gets quoted on its own before any work starts. Nothing begins first.

Build a search audit before the conversation

Create a short inventory with five columns: query, URL, what it says, whether it's accurate and current, and the next action. Check your name alone, and check it with the role, company, or location people use to identify you. Keep a public-search audit separate from a formal background check.

Prioritize the pages you control first: biography, current role, published work, and contact details. Then separate the pages that need a factual correction from the accurate ones you'd rather not lead the results. Our professional reputation work brings those decisions together. Daily search monitoring can follow changes after an announcement.

Be ready before the first search.

We read your first two pages the way a search firm would, tell you what they'll find, and fix what can be fixed.

Have us do it.

See the scope, price, and next steps for the help this guide describes.

See the service

Your professional reputation is bigger than one page.

Your website, profiles, published work, and search results all shape what people learn about you. We help you promote existing work, address individual results, and keep track of what changes.

Make your search results reflect your work today

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Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them, see what we do and what it costs, or read why we built this company.

Written by Drew Chapin, who ran all of this on his own name first.