Personal Branding for job seeking

A recent article posted on yahoo.com referenced one of our Digital Marketing guest speakers, Patrick Ambron and his co-founded company Brand Yourself:
https://money.yahoo.com/job-career-online-screening-reputation-155558910.html

We discussed, it is standard play in the current environment for recruiting and HR professionals to leverage digital resources to source, scan, and more importantly, weed out, potential candidates. I've explored the impact of personal branding and how to proceed with best practices.

Luckily for me, I have a pretty generic surname associated with a korean background so there are plenty of Jennifer Ahns to dilute the google universe but on the other front, I started to consider the important of building a positive online presence vs trying to avoid it altogether.
Following the article and the concepts discussed in class I looked into how important or relevant it may be to have a clean yet marketable online presence. I found a few interesting points:

-Leveraging Linkedin: With a comprehensive and well formulated Linkedin presence you are presenting yourself to recruiters in the best light - over 90% of recruiters regularly use Linkedin. A study found that 122 million people received an interview through Linkedin.
Having a searchable and active presence on the forum would be beneficial in branding yourself to potential employers.

-Over 70% of employers use social media to screen candidates during the hiring process and about 43% of employers use social media to check on CURRENT employees. After becoming aware of how impactful your social media accounts can be, I took steps to ensuring my accounts privacy settings were updated and represented what I would want an external AND internal network to see. There have also been recent articles about non US Citizens getting denied re-entry into the US due to their connections on forums like Facebook therefore not only analyzing your profile but your associations is vital.

In the brief synopsis above, it is evident digital marketing's perspective on a personal basis is an important element to positioning yourself professionally. Protecting your reputation and promoting your capabilities/industry knowledge/network are certainly foundational to seeking new opportunities and building on existing ones.