Reflection on Topic 3
I really enjoyed this week’s topic given it’s relevance for final year students like myself who are looking to kick-start their post-university careers, and interact with employers online.
In this week’s blog, I considered the benefits of firstly using LinkedIn to create a professional presence online and then looked at how Twitter is emerging as a social media platform which facilitates interactions with employers on all levels from companies. I provided a list of top tips which I had collated from researching further on how best to use Twitter and LinkedIn for a professional purpose and for the first time, I embedded a video into my post which I felt really clarified my discussion of why students should use LinkedIn.
Whilst I chose to look at Twitter and LinkedIn, the other blogs posts published by my fellow students have got me thinking on the importance of ensuring that our presence on other social media platforms like Facebook for instance, is professional.
To this end, Sophie’s blog was really useful for highlighting to me the fact that employers are checking content we post on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter rather than just LinkedIn, which I was unaware of prior to this week.
Equally, Catherine’s blog demonstrated through her reading of the PotentialPark Survey (2011) recognised that authentic professional profiles are expected to happen on LinkedIn, but in fact, Facebook is where this actually happens. Which again stressed the importance of a professional Facebook profile to me!
Anna’s blog was also very helpful in clarifying what constitutes an authentic online profile and her use of Prezi was original and easy to follow. Her question ‘have you ever googled yourself?’ encouraged me to do just that and really underlined the importance of creating positive ‘google juice’. This coupled with my own findings that “80% of employers Google job seekers before inviting them into an interview!” bought home the importance of creating a professional online presence.
All in all, this week’s topic has been extremely topical (excuse the pun), but has truly shown me how I can best make my online presence professional and hopefully successfully interact with employers.
My comments:
Anna’s blog: http://annakentmuller.wordpress.com/2014/11/08/how-to-create-an-authentic-online-presence/#comments
