Building your online professional profileLisa Harris

7th February 2014#UOSM2012

Featuring @FloBroderick via Google Hangout

The Plan• The growth of social media and its relationship with search• Introduction to digital literacy• Building your professional profile

– the employer perspective– the employee perspective– Further examples and resources

• Scoop.it Resources for “Building Your Online Professional Profile”• Video “Social Media and employability” presented by Sue

Beckingham (23 mins) • “Building your personal brand through social networking” by Lisa

Harris and Alan Rae: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/182817/

Growth in personal and business use of social media

• The Internet is now used by 78% of the British population, up from 73% in 2011

• Social media use has plateaued at 61% (up from 60% two years ago) – but new social tools eg WhatsApp not included (Oxford Internet Surveys 2013)

• 77% of Fortune 500 now have active Twitter accounts and 70% maintain a Facebook Page, according to a University of Massachusetts Dartmouth study.

• 90% of small businesses now report using social media. • Social media revolution 2013 (Eric Qualman, 3 mins)

Why should you care?A standard CV is no longer sufficient to stand out from the crowd in a global and rapidly evolving job market:

“We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist, using technologies that haven’t been invented, in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.”- Karl Fisch, “Did You Know”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmwwrGV_aiE

What does Google like?• Social media interaction with digital content is the *biggest influence* on

its search visibility:

1. Facebook shares2. Facebook comments3. Facebook likes4. Tweets

http://www.socialmediastrategist.co.uk/blog/1-news/175-social-media-seo

• Google “Hummingbird” for the latest update…a “new engine” for Google• https://www.google.com/settings/me to see what information google

makes public about you, and how others see your profile

Content, content, content

• People sharing/liking your content has an SEO benefit• Good content is a top reason why people follow brands

on social media • Build social capital by giving away good stuff –

endorsements and sales will follow• Content can educate, inform, entertain or inspire…

resulting in brand advocates• Facebook’s “Edgerank” score increases with engagement,

decreases with negativity. This influences how many people get to view a brand’s post in their newsfeed

Did you know…?

Digital marketing principles can also be applied to ourselves to attract potential employersFor example, creative videos produced by candidates now play an important role in the job application processAs do blogging, tweeting and participating in relevant online communities such as LinkedIn30 million students and recent graduates are now on LinkedIn, its fastest-growing demographic.

Digital Literacy• “Digital literacy is the ability to locate, organise,

understand, evaluate, and analyse information using digital technology. It involves a working knowledge of current tools and an understanding of how they can be used”

• “The active management of online activities such as collaboration, networking , content creation and curation in order to “stand out from the crowd” in today’s job market”

• “an ability to respond positively to change”

Blogs: pulling it all together• Use the blog framework as a central point pulling in your other social

media content: Digital Economy Blog or to aggregate a series of blogs as per Multidisciplinary Research

• Tweets – Flickr – LinkedIn – Vimeo - Slideshare – Pinterest - Soundcloud - YouTube

• You can also embed other social media within individual blog posts• Video is increasingly important, especially authentic user generated

content• Provide sharing buttons • These activities provide a regular supply of “googlejuice” to the blog

Dare you Google yourself...?

Exercise

• Go to http://reppler.com and check your own social media profiles. The tool highlights any inappropriate content, and shows you what aspects of your information are publically available. Then you can connect directly to Facebook to edit your privacy settings and adjust the visibility of your content as necessary.

• This exercise does require you to allow Reppler access to your social media accounts as explained in their privacy policy

• “Every potential candidate for 2040 presidental election is now unelectable due to Facebook” - satire

So what are employers doing?

• According to a recent study by Jobvite – 92% of recruiters use social media in the hiring process– 80% had been positively influenced by a candidate’s

professional social network profile– 78% had been negatively influenced towards a candidate’s

inappropriate use of social media

• The best candidates might not be actively looking for a new job (up to 90% of the workforce)

• Social media can identify the best talent , encourage conversation and build relationships with them

• Enables recruiters to promote their company as “a great place to work”

Recruitment 3.0

• The best candidates might not be actively looking (possibly 90%) so seek them out online

• Recruiters should actively create candidates not wait for job seekers to find them

• Employer brand: they should promote their company as a “great place to work”

• Foster a culture of transparency and interaction, without trying to ‘control the message’

• Embrace social media to encourage conversation and community building

Social media in the workplace: Hootsuite

• Public and transparent hiring process through dedicated HR twitter account

• Internal communications via twitter break down workplace hierarchies

• Employees are encouraged to become “brand ambassadors” through company and personal networks

• Appropriate business culture is more critical than the technology – open, non hierarchical

• McKinsey report: internal value created by communication, collaboration and knowledge sharing improves productivity by 20/25% (includes podcast, 9 mins)

• Internal social networking (Video, 4 mins)

Flipping the Funnel

• A well defined online presence allows employers to specify exactly what type of candidates they are looking for

• candidates can check out company ‘fit’ through posted video, tweets, blogs, personal interactions on LinkedIn

• The CV becomes the final stage in the process rather than the first

• Video drops• Check out the Hootsuite example

So what should job seekers do?

• Recognise that building an online personal brand is now a critical aspect of career development

• It boosts our reputation and gives us new skills in communication, creativity and reflective thinking.

• The information we display on social networks should actively encourage rather than discourage potential employers

• Don’t “opt out” - finding NOTHING about a person on a Google search creates a negative impression too

Digital Footprints: the practicalities

• It requires a long term strategy to develop a digital “footprint” which demonstrates our skills, and build an appropriate network of contacts.

• The successful author and speaker Chris Brogan talks about “paying it forward” – meaning we should give before we receive.

• For a more negative view of “digital tattoos”, see this TED video presented by Juan Enriquez of Harvard

www.employadam.com

• The original video• Why it works• The follow up video

Advice from the Guardian

• Why online CVs are essential in your job search– LinkedIn– Google profile– Twitter CV– Visual CV– Video CV

Using social media to get a job

• Connect (LinkedIn, FB, Twitter)• Collaborate (Skype, Dropbox, Google Drive)• Create (Wordpress, Soundcloud, Pinterest,

YouTube/Vimeo) • Curate (ScoopIt, Delicious, Slideshare)

Build & maintain your LinkedIn profile

• Ivan’s presentation highlights the increasingly central role of LinkedIn for job hunters

• “How to” guides for building your LinkedIn profile are available here

• Key points for getting started:– Send a personal message to people you wish to connect with– Make sure your profile is 100% complete– Collect and give recommendations– Connect your Slideshare and Wordpress accounts into

LinkedIn

The Future of You

“Welcome to a new era of work, where your future depends on being a signal in the noisy universe of human capital. In order to achieve this, you will need to master three things: self-branding, entrepreneurship, and hyperconnectivity.” By Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, in the HBR blog

What does this mean?

• Self-branding is about standing out from the crowd

• Entrepreneurship is about adding value to society by disrupting it and creating a better future.

• Hyperconnectivity is about drawing upon the power of the network to make and shape knowledge.

The Future of You: on the surface• Today's war for talent is the war for identifying, developing,

and retaining true change-agents. • Change-agents are hard to find, hard to manage, and hard to

retain. • Entrepreneurship is about being a change-agent; change-

agents are signals, everyone else is noise. • Hyperconnectivity is not about being online 24/7; it's about

optimizing the online experience for others. • Anybody can upload a video on YouTube or tweet, but only a

few can direct us to the videos or tweets we want to see. • in the age of information overload, where everybody creates

online content, effectively curating content is what really matters.

The Future of You: beneath the surface

• So far the article has attracted 77 comments–Some say it is spot on…?–Others think it is satire…?–What do you think?

My takeaways

• Self branding is not about “look at me”, but about “doing great stuff” which others benefit from and then amplify on your behalf

• Authenticity is harder to achieve than buzz, but it is the only differentiator in the longer term

• Hyperconnectivity is the only really new factor

@lisaharris #CIMbrandyou

Linchpin

@lisaharris #CIMbrandyou

“Linchpin” by Seth Godin

• It's now more essential than ever to become indispensable - to become a linchpin.

• Linchpins are essential building blocks: they invent, lead (regardless of title), connect others, make things happen, and create order out of chaos.

• If you have you ever found a shortcut that others missed, seen a new way to resolve a conflict, or made a connection with someone others couldn't reach, then you have what it takes to become indispensable.

• It's time to stop complying with the system and draw your own map (from Amazon review)

• Seth Godin Interview (9 minutes)

@lisaharris #CIMbrandyou

@lisaharris #CIMbrandyou

A few notes of caution...

• Ongoing time and effort is required to develop and maintain online profiles, learn new tools and ascertain when best to integrate them into the mix.

• F2F brand building elements should not be forgotten – our research shows that it is not a zero sum game, good online networkers also tend to be effective communicators offline.

• As with most things in life, you get out what you put in, and persistence pays off.

• It is critical to be authentic. An *enduring* personal brand is not developed by basing it simply on ego, spin or piggybacking off the work of others...

• Boundaries between ‘business’ and ‘personal’ are blurring

Be creative

• See Ed Hamilton’s CV on Google Maps • Jay Foreman’s video history of London’s tube

stations• The video CV (4mins)

Finding me online

https://www.vizify.com/lisa-harrishttp://digitaleconomy.soton.ac.uk/people/lisa-harris/

www.about.me/lisa.harriswww.twitter.com/lisaharriswww.linkedin.com/in/lisajaneharrishttp://www.slideshare.net/lisaharrishttp://lisaharrismarketing.com