General feedback on topic 3

Well done for all your efforts in topic 3 – certainly the most popular topic so far in terms of volume and enthusiasm, with lots of useful resources shared on twitter and discussed. Keep it up! Your individual feedback is now posted.

Quite rightly some of you noted that digital portfolios are more relevant for some types of job than others, and even then it would be very unusual indeed for an online profile to be the ONLY basis upon which a hiring decision was made. Yes there is lots of exciting innovation in this space, but don’t get too carried away by the hype! Taking a critical perspective on whatever issue being discussed is definitely a good approach (and by “critical” I don’t mean “rubbishing” the idea, but instead presenting a range of positive and negative perspectives on a topic so that an informed decision can be made)

So now make sure that you apply the points you have discussed in topic 3 to the development of your own digital profiles – remember that the other element of assessed work for this module is to reflect at the end of it on how you plan to develop your own professional profiles.

As we’ve said to many of you on your individual feedback, now that you are comfortable with the style and structure of the module, why not experiment a little? Try some video or audio input to your posts, for example. Expand your networks beyond the course – reach out to relevant people or companies on twitter, this could be to thank someone for their interesting post that you used, or to follow a company you might be interested in working for in the future.

Lying in resumes is not new – a number of you mentioned the example of Yahoo chief executive Scott Thompson who falsely claimed to have a computer science degree. But these days it is much easier to be found out!

Some of you in this topic were rather descriptive, for example in terms of explaining how to use LinkedIn. You can achieve more impact by linking to a key piece and keeping your words to discuss which aspects you might find useful/difficult to do for yourself and why. For a good example see Kelly’s post.

A few specific comments:

Patricia noted the possibility of “landing your dream job even when asleep”. This is possibly a slight exaggeration but a number of you latched onto it! I think a degree of scepticism is called for here, because don’t forget that building, maintaining and customising professional profiles, and growing your networks around this, is very time consuming and not something that can be achieved overnight.

Sara reminded us that we still need to make our own luck and Evan provided a useful article on authenticity.

My favourite post so far came from Kauril – if you are looking for an example of best practice in educational blogging then you would do well to read it!

Don’t forget to check the “announcements” section of the blog and the #mang2049 regularly because there is a lot going on!