How I try to create my professional profile

Traditional networking may be more important than ever, but in a global and fast-paced economy we need to use the Web to be noticed. It enables us to reach much wider audience than through meetings and business cards exchange. As more and more recruiters scorch the Internet, and especially social media, in search of possible candidates, the online profile is what may be a key to finding one’s ideal job.

For most of the time, however, we do not think about the professional aspect when using the Web. Therefore, we may hurt our job prospects by leaving inappropriate digital footprint behind. This problem was already described in my Topic 2 blog post, where I mentioned the case of a person loosing a job because of a bad tweet. However, I was moved the case of Justine Sacco. Her example sheds a new light on the issue: her professional and personal life was destroyed because of a misinterpretation of just one sentence. Ironically, the man who helped her tweet to gain attention and criticism, Sam Biddle, found himself “on the other side” of the argument very soon – again, by people who did not understand his joke.

This topic made me think about how I curate my professional profile on the Web. The results are in the presentation below, where I describe how I use various social media sites and platforms to make myself more visible online. At the same time, I distinguish the social media site which I use privately and the ones that are directed to a wider audience. Justine Sacco’s case motivated me to try to keep my Facebook profile hidden from eyes of strangers, and visible only to my friends.

I have also learned how important it is to link one profiles on different websites, hence I created an about.me website to store all this information. As you may notice, I also try to use one picture of me on all accounts.

I am constantly learning how to construct my professional profile. My use of Twitter, Linked.in and other sites can be further improved, so it would be interesting to see your comments and advice. What channels do you use to be seen online?

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References:

[1] Jobvite 2014 Social Recruting Survey
[2] Jon Ronson, How one stupid tweet blew up Justine Sacco’s life, New York Times
[3] Sam Biddle, Justine Sacco is good at her job and how I came to peace with her, gawker.com

Used in presentation:
[4] Rachel Silverman, The new resume: it’s 140 characters, The Wall Street Journal
[5] Honey Smith, How to curate your social media presence when job-hunting, GetRichSlowly.org
[6] Web Science MOOC by University of Southampton, futurelearn.com