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Having a strong online professional presence is favourable in today’s competitive job market, and in this post I’ll focus on the uses and effects of LinkedIn.   Allison Cheston, founder of a careers advisement firm, says that the first thing she does when assessing candidates is review their LinkedIn profile, and … if they’re an active user.  This means contributing to the site, showing your personality, knowledge and opinions to your connections and the public. Continue reading →

  As social media has become a widespread feature within modern society, it also plays an increasingly important role within the recruitment process as highlighted by the statistics shown in Figure 1 and 2. This makes it quintessential for jobseekers, in particular graduates to keep up-to-date authentic online professional profiles so that all important job opportunities are not being missed. Continue reading →

Whilst I always recognised the importance of my presence online and the role it can play in determining my employment possibilities, attaching a statistic to the seriousness of the issue has completely changed my outlook on the matter. Being aware that 93% of recruiter’s review a candidate’s social media profile before making a hiring decision has made me completely rethink my online professional appearance. Continue reading →

Nowadays social media is ubiquitous and serves as a platform for personal as well as professional networking. Whereas the recruitment process used to involve a CV and an interview, today users’ online presence comes into play, and the CV becomes the final stage in the process rather than the first. Continue reading →

As a society, we are increasingly putting more information about ourselves online meaning that our online identities plays an important role in our everyday lives. This is particularly the case for those that demonstrate ‘digital resident’[1] traits as their increased online activities would cause their online identity to become more valuable. Continue reading →

I found this topic really intellectually stimulating because I’ve only thought about it in a black-and-white way before.  Finding readings to evaluate made me more informed, however on a sub-conscious level I probably gravitated towards those I agreed with.  I realised what a valuable learning curve reading others’ blogs to comment on is because it actively challenges my thoughts, especially when those viewpoints are evidenced. Continue reading →

From the beginning of this topic my stance was neutral, and it still is. However, by reading all the UOSM2008 blogs, I gained more insight on both sides of the debate. Thus, I created a poster which illustrates all the points made in those posts. Continue reading →

This online identity topic has, much like the digital residents and visitors topic, an element of ambiguity for the different online identities which people can have and the level of anonymity these hold.  An identity refers to what we do and who we are (Internet Society, 2006), so our online identity is an extension of this. Please click on the photo to access the original photo submission. Continue reading →

As the amount of social networking sites have increased, individuals have more platforms to interact with each other over. Costa and Torres however, claim that this has provided users with the ability to reconstruct their personas or even develop multiple personas online. Continue reading →

As the “digital residents and visitors” topic taught us, most web-related subjects are not black or white. Similarly, having multiple online identities is not an absolute debate, but rather serves many purposes, given it is employed properly.  But what do we mean by multiple online identities? In this context, its not about simply using different accounts … Continue reading Think you are anonymous? Think again. Continue reading →

One of the key points that I have learnt from topic 1 is that the distinction between the two categories boils down to individuals engaging with the internet differently. Holly’s post likened digital visitor’s use of the internet as a vacation and residents use to a world traveller which is a good metaphor for the distinction between the groups. Continue reading →

For this week’s topic, we were given the task of explaining the concepts Digital ‘visitors’ and ‘residents’. These terms originally seemed new to me until I realized that they were developments which had been made to the infamous terms of Digital ‘natives’ and ‘immigrants’ popularized by Prensky. Continue reading →

I’ve discussed the differences in digital competencies of family and friends before, but never knew that there were theories surrounding this until this module.  I’ve since found myself analysing my friends’ online behaviour more, and classifying them as either Digital Residents or Digital Visitors (White and Cornu).  I also looked at my own past online behaviour, mainly through looking at my Facebook timeline, and classified myself as a Digital Resident. Continue reading →

Although Topic 1 was about us dipping our toes into the blogging water, it had a great impact on me. At first I was more focused on creating a clear image of what “digital residents” and “digital visitors” are. I read through Prensky’s, Le Cornu, and White’s papers so I could understand their theories. Continue reading →