Authenticity proved to be the differing factor between most blogs by my peers on this topic. It was evident we all knew the importance of having an authentic professional online identity, as almost everyone mentioned the part social media now plays in recruitment. However, there were many different interpretations of authentic.
The most common interpretation was to take authentic, define it literally and apply it to an online profile. This means you are who you are offline, online. One person to take this approach was Arun. Though this is correct in a literal sense, I feel there is a bit more to being authentic as demonstrated in my blog. I likened authenticity to branding. For example, we as consumers trust and believe certain companies to be authentic, such as Nike, due to their great branding. The branding of oneself is what I felt was key to the authentic part of an online identity.
On the other hand, I felt many people agreed upon what it meant to be professional online. This was to not say anything stupid online and to have a LinkedIn. However, I do feel many people, including myself, were at fault for simply focussing on LinkedIn to provide the professional aspect of their online identity. This was something I addressed on Nicole’s blog, asking if there were any other ways she felt could help boost your online identity professionally.
I very much agreed with Tobie’s excerpt on blogging. He believed that they are a fantastic way to showcase creativity, passion and dedication and that they can also help get you a job. I also queried Tiffany about this point and her response was very insightful. She explained it wasn’t enough to simply create a blog but the blog had to have a professional focus to achieve the desired effect. This was the focus of TheEmployable’s post and I feel many, myself included, failed to further seek how blogging can help you professionally.
Comments on other blogs:
Sources:
TheEmployable, 2014. How blogging can help you get a job
Thoughts by Kevin Irikefe 