Topic 3 – Reflective Summary

Examining the ways in which you can – and possibly need – to create and maintain a professional profile in this day and age really opened my eyes to the extent to which it can have an effect on our relationships with potential employers. This was driven home by Laura’s announcement on her blog (laurajhiggins.wordpress.com) that she had successfully managed to get an internship with Disney using social media – although she does state that it was mainly used to initiate contact, her CV being what she feels was the deciding factor in their decision to hire her.

Seeing someone in the same position make concrete progress in employment using social media is encouraging and has also provided extra motivation for myself and, I imagine, several others on the course to redouble their efforts. I will freely admit that my use of social media in a professional sense has been lacklustre so far; I rarely use Twitter to interact with those in my chosen degree field and have barely touched LinkedIn since creating my account. This is something I will look to improve on dramatically, especially over Easter after most of my university essay deadlines are over with!

In regards to my blog post on this topic, I believe that I could have written much more on the development of a professional profile past the initial creation stages that I focused on (as pointed out by Jazz Curzon). While this is an important stage, I could definitely have provided more information on the latter aspects of the process.