A detailed social recruiting survey by Jobvite and Contentmarketinginstitude states that 94% of recruiters utilise social media like LinkedIn to acquire employees and talents. It is not surprising as in this day and age where things are shifting to digital for the ease and speed it carries. Sure enough able to connect through digital platforms enable one to reach out to more opportunities.
I’ve listed a few steps to develop an authentic professional profile.
Start by using LinkedIn’s popular professional platform and develop/craft effective profiles to present information you want employers to see. Resumes should also be included to showcase past experience and scope of expertise. The contents should reflect you, much like a personal branding. It is also important that if you’re using multiple platforms, consistent information throughout will be ideal to avoid contradiction.
Then it’s about self-promotion, selling yourself across online platforms. A video on BBC mentioned having just the right information can attract or drive away visitors of your page. Using keywords and prioritise information that best describes you can make thing easier for viewers. Time’s article state that one’s profile will get significantly more engagement/views if there is a profile picture present.
Following businesses and other users on LinkedIn to establish a connection with them and get updates regularly can also make yourself visible to others. Engaging with them allows for networking and increase your professional circle and build professional identity.
Lastly it is very important to know what to post online and what not as everyone can see you on the net. A single inconsiderate, inappropriate or racist remark on social media could land you serious trouble; which Ron Jonson’s article on New York times spoke of the consequences of such behaviours results in job firing, offline & online public shaming and psychological impacts. It will then be difficult to re-establish your professionalism and credibility in future.
To conclude, to build an authentic professional profile, one needs to be factual about the information uploaded onto their profile page. Expertise and profession has to be backed up with past job experiences, qualifications and legit achievements. No one wants to hire an employee without credibility or worse, having fake information that does not reflect their true professional identity. Most importantly is keeping things clear and simple with appropriate and real contents of you online, and network with other professionals to increase credibility and presence.
Here’s a video to sums everything up well.
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References
2014 Social Recruiting Survey (2014) Available at: https://www.jobvite.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Jobvite_SocialRecruiting_Survey2014.pdf (Accessed: 9 November 2016)
2015 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends— North America (2015) Available at: http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/2015_B2B_Research.pdf (Accessed: 9 November 2016).
BBC (2013) Job hunting: How to promote yourself online. Available at: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-25217962 (Accessed: 9 November 2016).
Bullas, J. (2014) 25 LinkedIn facts and statistics you need to share. Available at: http://www.jeffbullas.com/2014/12/02/25-linkedin-facts-and-statistics-you-need-to-share/ (Accessed: 9 November 2016).
Comras, M. (2014) Let’s get LinkedIn. Available at: http://www.neilsrecruitment.co.uk/2014/01/lets-get-linkedin-2/ (Accessed: 9 November 2016).
Hovde, K. (2015) How to promote your personal and professional brand using LinkedIn. Available at: http://www.business.com/social-media-marketing/how-to-promote-your-personal-and-professional-brand-using-linkedin/ (Accessed: 9 November 2016).
Ronson, J. (2015) How One stupid Tweet blew up Justine Sacco’s life. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html?_r=1 (Accessed: 9 November 2016).
Snowdon, G. (2016) The rules of social recruiting. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2011/aug/19/rules-social-recruiting-linkedin-twitter-facebook (Accessed: 9 November 2016).
White, M.C. (2016) The 9 things your online professional profile must have. Available at: http://time.com/money/4365162/online-professional-profile-linkedin/ (Accessed: 9 November 2016).
MANG2049 - Living and working on the web 
Hi Jiajiun.
Comprehensive article you’ve written! Lots of useful tips. Personally, I agree that a professional profile has to be authentic. And I think LinkedIn has pretty much secured this base. Your video mentioned that users can attach themselves to the company profile. So, it seems there is little way to go about lying on LinkedIn.
But, what are your opinions about other digital platforms, such as social media accounts? I see (from your previous post) you agree that personal life and work life should not be mixed, in order to maintain a professional image. Do you think that simply the existence of multiple social media accounts though may, more or less, downplay our credibility?
Your last link talked about ‘expressing our personality’. I feel that personality is a bit difficult to deliver across on LinkedIn. I’m interested to know if you have any suggestions to share with us then!
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Hi Wanni,
thanks for reading my post! To answer your first point, I think it all comes down to how one manages their several social media accounts. So it is important to have consistent image through all professional profiles. You can have incredibly authentic and factual information on your professional profile across LinkedIn and still maintain another informal private Facebook account. That does not mean you’re not credible, it just mean you choose who to reveal your personal stuff to.
Personality can also be expressed through LinkedIn. It’s about how you write your content i.e your tagline, summary or eye-catching sentences you use on LinkedIn to grab attention. Then you can also engage with others on LinkedIn and see what your professional circle is doing, engage with them and share views with them. This can broaden your networking and let people know what kind of person you are.
It can also be linked to topic 3, where one develops a blog to write their views on topics. Personality can then be developed through your writing.
Hope this helps!
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Hey Jia Jun!
Overall, well written and put together post you’ve got here. Although there is one thing I would like to point out and that is your use of gif. As cute as the gifs may be, they are pretty distracting for viewers as it is constantly looping at the corner of the eye while the reader is trying to read the content. Like you said, personal branding is important as the right information can attract or drive away visitors of your page. However, it takes more than just purely having the right information to retain a reader’s attention. Readability of content, especially on online professional profile, is important as it can get readers to stay and read the important information you want them to know about you.(http://www.socialmediatoday.com/marketing/irfan-ahmad/2015-10-31/10-fundamentals-readable-content-infographic)
Furthermore, proper consideration of the readability of context can subconsciously reflect positively on your personal brand image since readers get the impression that you are a detail-oriented person and would go the extra mile to improve one’s online experience. Therefore, next time when you use gif, be sure to make sure that it is not too distracting.
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Hello Valerie,
Thanks for reading and the feedback about using gifs. I will try to use them more carefully in future posts!
I do agree with you on readability of content is important because it will affect a viewers attention span on your profile. Sure enough, having too little content may seem incompetent, and having too much gives the expression or bragging oneself. Therefore using keywords and using clear sentences and placing them in order which you want viewers to read is important in bringing across your content.
Hence I have to agree that we need to put ourselves in a viewer’s point of view when writing and make sure our content do not downplay our professional image.
Thanks for the comment & feedback!
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