Scott has a good post of recommendations for new CS graduates is food for thought. I was lucky enough to keep a job that I got while in the co-op program at school, and stayed there for… well, far too long.
Most of the post comes out to “get street cred”, which is good. I think my first step on hiring someone would be to do searches on their name/email address on the net and see what comes out. The impression there will go a long way to see if I think they are the sort of person I’m looking for (ignoring the really early stuff of course).
I wonder if this sort of thing will influence people to not associate their “real” name with some types, or all types, or online activities. Personally I’ve sort of given up hiding / using a nick… it doesn’t take a whole lot of work to figure out that the person who calls himself “Arcterex”‘s real name is Ted Barreiro.