Developing Your Online Professional Profile
Increasingly the case for online employability is being brought forward and we need to take notice.
Social media gives both candidates and employers the chance to be more active in their job hunt (Holmes, 2012)
The use of certain social networks, like Twitter for example, did not emerge immediately as obvious professional environment – Twitter is said to be emerging as one of the best social networks used by companies to recruit new employees (Le Viet, 2014). In this post I am going to focus on LinkedIn but it must be noted that “conventional” recruitment processes may not always be appropriate.
LinkedIn is very widely used and is essential in the recruitment process for many businesses. The following video explains the importance of a LinkedIn presence for university graduates who are job-seeking. (Note the use of the controversial terms ‘native’ and ‘immigrant’ discussed previously in Topic 1 being used here relating to LinkedIn).
It’s important to tailor your LinkedIn (and other professional profiles) to the type of job and/or sector you want to work in, for example, having a short punchy opening line on your profile explaining your career goals. Relevance is key here to make sure your profile is attracting the right people (Holland, 2014).
Developing contacts and connections on LinkedIn is crucial to have a truly authentic profile.  Online professional profiles also allow people to link examples of their work or previous projects (theguardianjobs, 2011). As a language student, this is relevant because it’s easy to state your language level but more difficult to prove it unless you have a specific qualification or meet the employer in person. Having a blog/website/twitter account in which you write only in that language is a way to prove you have genuine skills on your online profile. So “interlinking” of different profiles is essential to ensure their authenticity (Comras, 2014).
LinkedIn Profile Tips:
- Tailor your profile to suit your interests
- Ambiguity will not work in your favour – Ask yourself – Could it be interpreted in different ways?
- Contacts and Connections – are they relevant to your field?
- Link other relevant profiles and/or projects
Above all, the message is: make the most of the online tools which we have readily available to us and be open to different processes of recruitment. By ensuring that we have a professional presence on multiple online platforms, we are not only creating an authentic profile for ourselves, but we are also making sure that our presence will not be missed by anyone – no matter which platform they use.
Sources:
Blank, H. (2013). Why College Students Need to Get Into Linkedin. YouTube.
Comras, M. (2014). Curating your Online Profile. Neil’s Recruitment Co.
Holland, M. (2014). Six tips for managing your professional online profile. Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals.
Holmes, R. (2012). How Social Media Is Making Job Hunting Better – For Candidates and Companies. Hootsuite.
Le Viet, S. (2014). Twitter’s Redesign Makes the Platform Ripe for Recruitment. Mashable, Business.
Why online CVs are essential in your job search. (2011). the guardian jobs.
