In the modern workplace it has become increasingly important to have an authentic professional digital presence. Employers like it when they can see that a potential employee has invested time in maintaining an online presence be it in the form of a blog, or their own website, or even on professional social media sites just as LinkedIn. It shows initiative, and you would be surprised at the opportunities that can arise from being noticed online [6].
Running a blog is one way to draw positive attention to yourself and is a useful way to help build up a professional digital profile. It can allow you to express your creativity and passion in a way that a potential employer may not be able to see otherwise [1]. It shows motivation and dedication when you make an effort to frequent post and create original content and it helps to provide authenticity as to claims you may have made about yourself. Similarly, having your own website can provide the same benefits. You can make frequent informative posts, or you can link to a portfolio of your work to show potential employers just what you are capable of – solid authentic proof of your skills.
Also beneficial, is the use of professional social media sites. One such site is LinkedIn, which allows you to create a profile where you can detail your employment and educational history, your skills and experience, and your desires employment wise. Having information about yourself on LinkedIn along with a profile picture and links to the network of professionals and recruiters (who may just offer you a job) also helps to cement your authenticity. Furthermore 77% of all job postings are on LinkedIn – almost half of which are not posted anywhere else, and 94% of all recruiters use LinkedIn to search for employees [4].
Across all of these methods for building a professional digital profile, it is important to know both how much and which information you should be providing. It is unwise to have very little information about yourself, otherwise you do not gain very much from the presence you have created online and your authenticity is weak. At the same time, you should not bombard people with a sea of information – they simply may not have the time or will to read it all [2]. It is best to highlight what you think the key information about yourself is, and make this clear and prominent within the webpage [5]. And finally, I shall remind you of the woeful tale of Justine Sacco, whose ill-conceived tweet in poor taste caused global mass offence and cost her her job – the moral of the story being, check everything you post and make sure it could not be misconstrued in any negative way [3].
Sources:
- The Employable (2014). How Blogging Can Help You Get a Job. Last Accessed: 13/3/15. Available: http://www.theemployable.com/index.php/2014/10/28/blogging-can-help-get-job/
- BBC News (2013). Job Hunting: How to Promote Yourself Online (video). Last Accessed: 13/3/15. Available: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25217962
- Jon Ronson (2015). How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life. The New York Times Magazine. Last Accessed: 13/3/15. Available: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html
- Lisa Harris (2014). Using Social Media in Your Job Search. University of Southampton: Web Science MOOC. Last Accessed: 13/3/15. Available: http://moocs.southampton.ac.uk/websci/2014/03/13/ill-tweet-job-spec-snap-cv/
- Ohio State University: Building Your Professional Online Presence. Last Accessed: 13/3/15. Available: https://asccareerservices.osu.edu/sites/asccareerservices.osu.edu/files/Building %20a%20Professional%20Online%20Presence.pdf
- Aaron Crouch (2013). Creating A Professional Online Presence Is Crucial For Today’s Job Market: Here’s How. Makeuseof. Last Accessed: 13/3/15. Available: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/creating-a-professional-online-presence-is-crucial-for-todays-job-market-heres-how/
at16g13 
I enjoyed reading your post Ammaar and like how you point out there should be a balance between having too much information but importantly too little as why would someone want you to work for their dynamic, engaged company if you can’t do that as an individual.
I wonder what types of information you think you should put online and what priority you would give them, in that you said you should highlight key things about you?
I think from the Justine Sacco case it is important as well to consider the scope of whatever you post online. A lot of social network sites get a bad rep for privacy when most if not all do offer some kind of control of the privacy of user’s posts. I think people expect the site to just do it automatically when how could it know what you want private and what you don’t. In the case of Sacco, maybe she had not considered that although she had a small number of followers her post could still be seen by all.
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