Reflections: Professional Identity
This week brought an insight into the importance of development of online professional identity. What struck me during preparations for writing my own post, but also while reading others contributions was the extent to which recruiters use social media and online search to review candidates.
Which leaves us, the job-seekers of some sort, with no choice but to curate our professional online profile. Throughout this week, I believe I have taken a crash-course in the basic principles of doing so. The main points include:
1. Being pro-active. Writing a blog or uploading our photographs is beneficial (Nicole wrote about a great example). Acitivties that show our creativity, eagerness to share and comment are helpful in online networking and are likely to impress potential employer. There simply is no better way to show our interest in the topic and hard-working attitude.
2. Making our voice heard (as Jens’ put it in his post). In order for our online presence to be more visible, we need to gain viewers, readers, and attention. The way to do so is maintaining an active social media profile, which links to our works/articles (for example on linked.in or twitter). Web gives us space to interact with people we would be unlikely to meet otherwise: my tweet about Topic 1 post, which resulted in brief chat with Dave White (the author of Visitors/Residents cathegorisation) himself:
3. Being authentic. As Tatiana mentioned in a comment to my post, the process of showing professional self online may also be scary. One needs to add a bit of personality to his presence, showcasing his or her human nature as well. Too stiff online behaviour is often found boring by the web community, so there is space for a more personal, relaxed tweets and articles!
My comments:
