Pathways to Professionalism
As we delve deeper into the 21st century, we have to find a balance between recreational and professional usage of social media platforms, as our online presence is becoming a more and more intrinsic part in the job hunting and recruitment process. Huang et al. (2015) stated that creating an organised visualisation of our person is an indispensible method in making positive advancements to our lives. Thus, the web is key in offering tremendous professional potential if we understand how to use it to our advantage.
First and foremost, I’ve found that linking together every social media platform that you use is critical in developing a sense of authenticity and accountability. For instance, from this blog you can easily access my LinkedIn via a button and view my Twitter feed through my widget. Moreover, I also tend to use the same display picture across all my networks, so that I am easily identifiable (although, having an unique name helps too!)
Being half way through my UOSM2008 journey, I have decided that keeping a blog is invaluable in expressing personal opinions and, therefore, exhibiting your enthusiasm in a dedicated field of expertise (TheEmployable, 2014). Blogging also showcases your writing style, a skill that many employers review you by, according to Jobvite (2014). Overall, however, it is your aim to be the stand out candidate. Look at Adam Pacitti for example: he went outside the box to land himself his ideal job. How about starting a video blog (vlog) or creating a digital portfolio on Pathbrite? There is an abundance of ways to parade your talents on the web, whilst still maintaining highly professional standards.
Although the goal is to be as authentic as possible, it is also important to sift through the things that you would not like your potential employers to see… Moving towards a professional online presence would not work entirely in your favour if every photo after a night out were easily accessible, would it? Further statistics provided by Jobvite showed that, in 2014, employers were said to have increased their social networking recruitment methods by 73% – so it is fundamental to build your digital profiles as professionally as possible. As I mentioned earlier, you have to ensure that your personal life isn’t getting entangled in the professional spider’s web that you worked so hard to spin together.
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References:
Huang, D., Tory, M., Adriel Aseniero, B., Bartram, L., Bateman, S., Carpendale, S., Tang, A. & Woodbury, R., 2015. Personal visualization and personal visual analytics, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 21(3), p.420-433.
Jobvite, 2014. 2014 Social Recruiting Survey. [online] Available at: <https://www.jobvite.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Jobvite_SocialRecruiting_Survey2014.pdf> [Accessed: 6th March 2015]
TheEmployable, 2014. How blogging can help you get a job. [online] Available at: <http://www.theemployable.com/index.php/2014/10/28/blogging-can-help-get-job/> [Accessed: 6th March 2015]
