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Luis Navas thought he and his fellow directors at a Toronto-based public company had zeroed in on a compelling candidate for a vacancy on their board. The man's résumé was rock solid, and he had passed the interview with aplomb.

Then Mr. Navas, a corporate governance expert and executive compensation adviser, decided to conduct a quick background check, the kind that's become almost standard in recruitment circles. He "Googled" him.

After typing the candidate's name into the Google.com Internet search engine, Mr. Navas was surprised by what his computer unearthed.

"Up came a lawsuit that the person was involved in," Mr. Navas said, declining to identify the man or company. It turned out the man had been embroiled in a shareholder action following a bankruptcy at another company where he'd been a director. What especially disturbed Mr. Navas was the fact the board specifically asked the candidate, whether he'd ever been the target in a lawsuit.

"It was one of the inputs in turning us off on the person, because we had asked the question: 'Have you ever been sued in the past as a director?' " said Mr. Navas, whose full-time job is managing director of Executive Risk Governance Advisors, a Toronto-based executive compensation and corporate governance consulting firm.

The moral, Mr. Navas says -- besides honesty being the best policy, of course -- is that the Internet has become an indiscriminate repository of personal information, a fact that should be of concern to image-conscious corporate leaders. Among other things, he says, it could cost them their next job.

"It's incredible how much information you are able to generate on individuals," he said, citing such potentially uncomfortable details as property tax and land disputes as a particularly rich vein of public-domain information. "I would say not many executives are paying enough attention to what information is out there representing them on the Internet."

Indeed, executive recruiters are increasingly turning to handy search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, to gain a more complete and independent snapshot of candidates. According to a recent survey conducted by the U.S. executive networking website ExecuNet, 77 per cent of executive recruiters rely on on-line searches to learn more about candidates and 35 per cent said they have eliminated candidates from consideration based on information uncovered on-line. That rejection rate was up nine percentage points from the 26-per-cent rate reported in a similar ExecuNet survey last year, when the firm first began polling 100 executive recruiters on their use of on-line resources.

David Opton, ExecuNet's chief executive officer, says the sad fact behind the figures is that many candidates will never know they were passed over for a job. "That's over a third who never got a shot at something because, when that recruiter saw the article that they wrote or saw what they posted somewhere, they said: 'Nope, this guy is not the right fit for this client.' "

While it's true all job seekers should be concerned with digital dirt and the skewed optics of the Google prism, recruiters say the issue is particularly relevant to senior executives, for whom the right stuff increasingly means having an unimpeachable character as well as operational skills.

"Now more than ever, you look to executives to have an exemplary image," said Mark Palmer of Palmer & Company Executive Recruitment Inc. of Toronto. "There's more at stake. Corporations are investing more and more resources to support that person."

Although it's virtually impossible to suppress court documents or public transcripts of property disputes, Mr. Opton suggests executives conduct regular searches of their own names. At the very least, they'll know what's being said and will be better prepared should embarrassing information arise in an interview, assuming they get to the interview stage.

That might have helped avoid an embarrassing confession earlier this month by North Carolina-based telephone directory publisher R.H. Donnelley Corp. It was compelled to announce that, contrary to an executive biography on its website and prior assertions by the company, its chairman and chief executive officer, David Swanson, never graduated from the Minnesota university he attended.

Recruiters also suggest that executives make every effort to confront on-line publishers who traffic in inaccurate or misleading information, which might include personal attacks or factual errors on personal weblogs and bulletin boards, or even unflattering photographs snapped at public functions. Although, they admit, that is easier said than done.

Tom Copeland, chairman of the Canadian Association of Internet Providers and president of Eagle.ca, an Internet service provider in Cobourg, Ont., says ISPs generally resist getting involved in he-said-she-said disputes over content unless law enforcement compels them to. But he recommends parties who feel they've been smeared by digital dirt should contact the website author, who in many cases will co-operate and remove the offending material voluntarily.

Should this fail, Mr. Copeland says, there's always the police. He adds that local forces have become adept at addressing on-line violations.

And the most important tip of all: Make sure your curriculum vitae squares with your "Google vitae."

"I get very upset when people have massaged their résumé and have omitted some [embarrassing] position or called it a consulting position rather than a full-time position," said Mr. Palmer, the recruiter. "You can't do that."

Polishing your on-line image

Use caution. Avoid posting potentially sensitive comments on blogs, social networking profiles and

on-line forums. Anything connected to your name on-line can be viewed as a reflection of your character and

integrity.

Search yourself. Enter your name

into multiple search engines on a monthly basis to stay informed about what's being said about you personally and professionally.

Be honest. If the academic qualifications, company information and titles on your résumé don't match what's found on-line, prospective employers will be quick to move on.

Start a blog. This will give you the chance to burnish your image and counter the negative on-line spin.