Employers and Social Media!

Searching for a job now, is not limited to certain career title, and not bounded by the country you live in or the language you speak. Nowadays, you can literally, search the world for a job. In the same situation, the employers are also searching the globe for job candidates. I totally agree that the online representation of employees helps to give a good impression. It also allow you to emphasis on the skills and experiences that can help market yourself. The competition out there started to be very difficult. Am I ready for that?!

I think that there should be a separation between our use of social media websites in terms of professional-wise and social-wise. I'm sort of person who can play a game on a Facebook, or like a page for a fashion designer or even writing something friendly on a friend's wall .. and I think all these things are not relevant to any kind of career I'm doing or willing to do. For me, Facebook is a social network that employers shouldn't be using for building a decision about a future employee. Unless the employer wants to know if a certain employee was using the social networks during work hours or not! However, there still sites and applications that help you clear up the electronic mess you have done before.

On the other hand, I would recommend using a "professional" website or network, like LinkedIN or ResearchGate, where the main goal from joining it is building a professional presence on the Internet. One can connect to work colleagues, classmates, or people met on a conference or a workshop. My colleagues can recommend me in doing certain kind of jobs based on real documented experiences, i. e., projects we have done together. Also Twitter, is a good option for employers to look at. It allows short posts a time, so it enforces you to think about what you are going to tweet. Moreover, it is a more general purpose social media means which can give the employer a good idea about the potential employees as well as following their up-t-date opinions (short opinions). It will not neither waste the time of an employer nor the employee.

To be honest, my own accounts on Facebook and Twitter are not ready at the moment to be viewed by any kind of employers. I used the first for family and friends contact means and I'm not using the second actively. Although I don't recommend that employers look for me on Facebook, and I'd prefer if they do the search on a more professional sites, I still need to polish my online presence to be more professional, may be by using privacy options to get more privacy and know who see what on my profile. Personally, I like the idea of making a new CV style, that you can upload a video about yourself, some artists upload cartoon video about themselves. A picture web page is another attractive idea for a CV, with some logos for the companies I worked for and the photos of me giving a seminar ... etc. I thought of something like using Prezi for an idea presentation about me in a nut shell. This will be attractive, take small space and accessible by employers. Moreover, as a lecturer-to-be, it will be a good introduction about me to my students too. This can help me get some students who are willing to do some research in an area which I like or I already doing research in. This kind of information will be part of my online presence.

Social Media and Me!

The only social media means I used for three years (2004-2007) was Yahoo! Groups, where using yahoo email account, you can create a group and invite members to join and start exchanging ideas, news, and files. I started by being a member in some groups (i. e., funny ones, course-related ones). Then I became a moderator in a group which was basically talking about the need to have a profession syndicate for Software Engineers in Egypt. This one was the seed for the recent law (waiting for a Parliament decision) for establishing the Egyptian Software Engineers Syndicate. I was organizing the emails exchange, control memberships, sending announcements to avoid spam and irrelevant emails. After sometime, I joined many groups and I started to receive tones of emails, which made me leave some of them. When I discovered Facebook by invitation from a friend, I started to use it and even play on its application games, which keeps you playing for months and years!

Being in the UK, I use Facebook basically everyday to connect with my family and friends in Egypt. I added some of my students who are working now in different software companies worldwide. I don't think my Facebook account is representing my professional career, though I'm using my real details and added some profession history on the profile.

I built an account on LinkedIN to be connected with my career friends and the professionals in my field. It is really helpful to present your CV, work history, and all this can be supported by recommendations from others. Doing the PhD in computer science, I used it to connect to people I may not be able to meet at all. Researchers and other PhD students in the same area of research can accept your invitation immediately or through others introducing you to them. Though, I didn't use it to look for a job, yet. In LinkedIN, people can endorse your skills and expertise that they know you have, or they worked with you before and you showed that skill at that time. I have more than 250 connections and they are increasing!

 

I have already accounts on: Twitter (which I'm not very active using it), and ResearchGate (to follow research in my field of study). I do believe that having accounts on several network is  good in keeping the one updated with what is going around, however, it is really annoying to get the same ad or message (email) from the same contact in each network you use. This is really not a good thing and consumes, space, time and efforts too. I would like to have one professional network and one social network, so it will be one place to look for my career/research staff, and another one to play and communicate with friends and family in an informal way.

At the same time, you are not going to be guaranteed a job once you published your CV or connected to employers, it is just opening a new window on you that employers can use to learn more about who they are going to employ. It gives them the confidence that you can represent yourself as a professional (than others). It gives you the opportunity to express your ideas and reactions towards different parties in different situations that you may not be able to express publicly in the scene. Personally, I need more academic work to be added to my experience, as well as more research publications. These are perfect representatives for an academic like me.