I think that's already the case. When I get a resume the first thing I do is Google the name. If I find an intelligent programming blog, good questions and good answers on Q&A sites, and intelligent comments on online discussions I'm way more likely to call back.
Good(or perhaps bad) thing my name is fairly common if you googled it you would more likely find Andy Hunt of Prag Prog than me. There is also a few PHDs that match my first last name exactly. There is a Gary Paulsen book that is one character off my name. Googling my nickname turns up an unaffiliated construction company, a printing company and oddly enough my profile on HN which is devoid of detail, so the only internet leads you will find on me are ones I choose to reveal.
So if you google my name and find Andy Hunt's blog or if you find the not me Dr. (PHD in Mathematics) Hunt, do I get a call back? Google is a powerful tool but to randomly believe there is only one person X out there is kind of shortsighted.
But to be serious my blog mentions neither my name or my nickname. If you find it, it won't be because you are looking for me. I don't write for self promotion, I am just not that fond of that guy. I write to write. I write to share. I write to improve my writing skills. I write because it gives me a point of focus. Fame and fortune isn't what I seek from my writing.
If you Google my name you get a variety of people with my name. For example, I know there's at least one other person with my name on Facebook who also lives in the same geographic region.
As more people get online it becomes harder to differentiate them.
I wonder if over time this will drive parents to deliberately choose more unique names and drive people to start using their middle initial more frequently.
This is something I'm sort of worried about. I've generally kept my casual nickname separate from my real name. If I'm doing something professional or academic, I'll use my real name, otherwise I'll use a pseudonym, and I work to keep them separate.
I've been thinking about starting a programming blog with my real name just so people have something to find when they Google for me.
Of course, it would help if I had some public results to point to with my name on them...
Is there a way change the openID account associated with your Stack Overflow account? Mine is associated with a name I'd rather not have potential employers seeing.
The danger there is false positives. To use my own name as an example, there are an impressive number of Timothy Wiseman's out there, at least two far more famous than I. Fortunately, a couple of the articles I posted do at least appear on the first page and the others are not programmers but it can be a major issue for some.
Most online discussion are behind nick name, not the name on the resume. I do not put my nick (sometimes I think I should LOL) on the resume. So, searching by resume name might not give you much results and give you false negative
