What I learned this week

Some really interesting posts this week with Anna’s post being the most creative and Jess’s post being the most user friendly.  A lot of blogs mentioned the usual culprits of Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn and the importance of having an updated and connected profiles so that we are easier to find.

Andy mentioned that it’s very difficult to get your profile noticed on google if you have a common name. I googled myself following Anna’s question and found that I’m not even on the first page! There were loads of people with exactly the same name as me and here I was thinkinh that my name was exotic and uncommon. In all seriousness employers would probably fail to find me if they didn’t have a picture of me. Perhaps my insistence of privacy over popularity may have financial drawbacks for me in the future.

I focused on my LinkedIn and Twitter profiles and how to engage businesses online to get noticed. I’m currently building my LinkedIn by getting connections and building my network and I learned a valuable lesson this week. Right now I’m in the process of applying for jobs in the banking sector and I thought that my LinkedIn would show that I had connections and experience. But LinkedIn has been completely irrelevant to the job applications so far, I am put through the usual gamut of filling online applications, taking psychometric tests and brown nosing the companies. This just confirms to me that digital profiles are so far only relevant to the creative industries,  industries requiring academic rigour simply are not bothered about how visible you are online. The old fashioned approach may have some utility but it lacks foresight, no wonder we see little change in the banking sector if the recruitment system itself is rigid.

I may have learned something about my online professional identity this week but I don’t know what the point of online professional identity is after my recent experience.