Topic 3: How do I dress myself professionally online?

We have all learned that when we are invited to a job interview we try our best to dress smart and professional, as well as talking professionally including body language. We also try our best in order to behave and keep our communication focused on the field that we are interested to be employed. Nowadays according 2014 social recruiting survey results [1], 73% of employees get recruited through social media. I am sure this ring the bells on how important it is to keep our online profile professional. Recruiting process is now really competitive and people are not only employed simply by their CV being reviewed, employers also search for candidates’ online presence and how professional their online identities are kept including how focused their virtual life are to the field of interested employment. Therefore it is crucial to keep our online presence as professional as our CV or a job interview preparation.

Here is Dr Marc and Charlie discussing how to develop a profissional online identity [3]

Since we understood the importance of our online professional profile, I am going to discuss how to achieve this goal. The following are tips for how to presents yourself professionally online, so that you can sell yourself good when it comes to online recruitment:

As argued on topic 2 it is very beneficially to have multiple online identities, separating private life from professional/business life. This gives as the control over our personal blogs and files that we share with our family to not effect our career life.
Google yourself to see what you have left behind online, and put yourself in the shoes of an employer so that you can decide if your online profile can convince a recruiter.

Any violent, sexual, or racism posts or comments and images should be removed or highly personalized, so that they are only shared with those that you want.

According Lissa Harris blog [2], 94% of all recruiters use LinkedIn to search for candidates. So it is really recommended to develop a professional LinkedIn profile. Also making sure all our other profiles such as Facebook and twitter, including personal website (if any) all linked in together, and the same profile image is used on all of them.

Making sure that all work experience, volunteer working and blogs are included in our profile in order to show creativity and talents.

One of my friends is working as a recruiter in a firm, and he advised me to target a sector that I want to be employed, and accordingly present myself online.

References

[1]

https://www.jobvite.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Jobvite_SocialRecruiting_Survey2014.pdf

[2]

http://moocs.southampton.ac.uk/websci/2014/03/13/ill-tweet-job-spec-snap-cv/

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmrV0MaXpgg