Leicester Award for Employability: Online Networking

By undertaking the Leicester Award for Employability: Online Networking -my second Leicester award- I was hoping to understand more about how to best utilise social media and what should be posted online. I chose it mainly because I already used many social media sites and with my study abroad period coming up, I knew I'd be using them a lot more and I wanted to be able to best use them to my advantage.

The first step on the award, researching myself on the internet, instantly highlighted the importance of security to me. Although on the whole I did not appear many times in the search result, it made me aware of how public my profiles are. Therefore I changed privacy details and edited what I wanted to be made readily available. I have now developed my awareness of internet privacy and how profiles can also be found via images and videos, not just search results. Other peoples' experiences of this, as detailed in our online discussion groups, have only made me more conscious of the issue and how anything that you post on the internet could be made accessible. 

However, on the flip side, I have learnt about how it is still necessary to have profiles on social networking sites in order to create an Online Digital Footprint for oneself. For example, I did not realise that employers can be wary of people that are not part of any social media website or have incomplete profiles. This pushed me to update my LinkedIn and Google+ accounts so that potential employers have all of my current information and the sites portray an up to date reflection of who I am. Furthermore I have linked them up, via this blog so that my online 'brand' is accessible all in one place.

Another lesson that I have learnt is how to connect with employers and the ease of connecting with them through social media. Each platform is used for different reasons, be it to connect with others or to promote their product. Therefore I understand that each site has different etiquette that should to be adhered to and shouldn't be forgotten. For example if I wanted to contact an employer I would use a platform such as LinkedIn or Facebook, rather than twitter where I may not be able to express everything I want to say, with the correct grammar in 140 characters. 

Finally, I believe that I have been able to better my reflective writing style and blogging skills through taking part. As the content should reflect me I have worked hard on my writing style and in order to work on it more I will continue to blog any transferrable skills that I gain and soon I will start a blog to document my study abroad period as previously mentioned.

I think that I have learnt about what I originally thought I would, and now I am learning more. These are commercial awareness skills and networking knowledge that I will continue to employ in the future, to make sure that the content that I put online is both well thought out and accurately reflects me.

Leicester Award Workshop 2: Part 2

Networking:

  

A large part of our social lives, I hadn't really thought about it as a part of our professional lives.

The lecture that was given during the second Leicester Award for employability workshop, provided some useful insights into how to create your own personal 'brand', by using networking sites. The very first tip that I took away from the session was to Google yourself occasionally to check that there isn't any false or unwanted information about yourself on the internet, that could potentially harm your employability. It was emphasised that in today's accessible world, the majority of employers turn to social networking sites to determine the type of person an applicant might be, before interviewing them. Although not the best source of wisdom I certainly remember this being a storyline in sitcom How I Met Your Mother, which just goes to show how common place it has become.

The other useful thing that I got out of the lecture was how networking can be useful to you. There are many a story that details how people found their job simply by tweeting, but those are always a fluke occurrences. However it is true that these sites allow an applicant to interact and ask questions with an employer, make themselves known and promote themselves outside of an interview environment.

Finally, it was suggested to revise the sorts of things that you post on the sites mentioned here. This might mean making your posts a little bit more PG and less 18+, but also making it more interesting to those who come into contact with it. In a survey shown to us, it was said that tweets that have thought provoking ideas, or random questions that might be in the news or that people can relate to are more interesting than an update of daily life, i.e 'Going to Nando's'. Yet once again a balance needs to be struck, between making yourself sound like an intelligent soul, but also one that has a life and interests.

Here's that How I met your mother clip!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkO2mHwNSn4