UOSM2008 Topic 3 -Online Professional Profiles

Discuss the ways in which an authentic online professional profile can be developed

Why it is important?
Having an online professional profile is increasingly important because of the ever increasing use of technology, what Antony Mayfield has termed ‘the digital revolution’. The scale of change, in which technology and web use has become almost a daily part of life for the majority, is unmatched and it is important to adapt with these changes in order to present yourself as effectively as possible in the competitive job market. According to a recent US survey, almost 90% of employers use, or plan to use, social media in recruitment processes. Having an online professional profile also allows people to approach you with opportunities based on the credentials presented; opportunities are no longer geographically limited thanks to online collaboration projects.

Ron Davidson’s interesting ideas in relation to economy development also indicates the power of using social media; I have bullet pointed his basic ideas but I would highly recommend watching this really informative video (unfortunately not the best filming quality).

• Inventions which help trigger economy change: steam engine, automobile, computer, internet/social media?
  • Technological invention: novel design that allows parts to do jointly what they could not do on their own (e.g car, computer)
  • Social invention: novel design that allows people to do jointly what they could not do on their own

A good example of individuals exploiting the medias power is this creative twitter approach which led to several companies approaching them job opportunities: twitter job hustle video

How?
With almost any social network,  typing in ‘how to…’ or ‘top tips for…’ in relation to the sites name on Google brings back an abundance of advice and instruction. Common ideas being: the importance of creating a personal brand (the impression you want to make before meeting someone), keeping profiles up to date and not putting up false information. Using a professional photo is often advised as the first step to creating a personal brand as we live in such a visual world.

In order to create an authentic profile it is important to maintain it to create an enduring personal brand, it is constantly on display. White points out there is a constant need to update social media, he furthers this by suggesting there is a relation between size and  content value (smaller content =looses value quicker). Authenticity is also important in the content, exaggerating, elaborating or being overly boastful about achievements is unattractive -and often noticeable (LinkedIn Liars). Understandably, reciprocal recommendations on LinkedIn also don’t look authentic: ‘Personal Branding on LinkedIn: 10 mistakes to avoid’ -this article has other good ideas such as tagging contacts with their field of work when starting a LinkedIn profile to make networking easier in the long run, worth a read.

I’d recommend this really interesting TED talk by Mayfield;

he acknowledges it takes some time to master something as habit, becoming adept with a new interface takes a similar amount of time to becoming proficient at driving or learning a musical instrument. His suggestion of using tweetstats.com to monitor number of tweets per week etc. is something I will be looking at myself in order to better monitor my contributions. In his book (p100) he also gives suggestions of what should be monitored daily, weekly, monthly and occasionally to efficiently maintain multiple online profiles [1].

Personal Experience
Personally, I would recommend setting time aside to initially create new online profiles as I think it is easier to create a complete picture in one sitting, especially as most don’t take that long! I started with Linkedin and Twitter as they were are most widely used with 277 million and 200 million users and plan to expand this further soon now I have become more adept with these platforms. I have found asking people who have used a network longer than myself backed up with Google searches has helped advance my knowledge of social network tools. For example, utilising contact lists on twitter and finding out more about the LinkedIn ‘wizard’ which rates the level of your profile was also useful -pleased to be an ‘expert’ but wanted to understand why and how to advance further.

Lastly, I have found learning about web and technology tools generally can be very helpful for improving variety in profiles and overcoming problems.  Mayfield suggests creating a visual representation of text data through Wordle; in a professional profile sense by asking colleagues etc. to summarise you in 3 words, collate this into a text document and use Wordle to create something that looks like this (more frequently mentioned words appear larger) [1]. This ‘visual reference’ idea may go part way to helping overcome my lack of suitable work-related referees on LinkedIn, though it seems more suitable to place in a my blog which is linked to my LinkedIn profile.

Always make sure you check your digital footprint to ensure appropriate privacy settings, particularly on private accounts!

Offline Resources:
[1] Mayfield, A. (2010) Me and My Web Shadow, How to manage your reputation online (Book)