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You would be amazed by how online recruitment have overtaken traditional method in hiring. Newspaper articles, job boards are a thing of past and employers are now using online tools to advertise their jobs (e.g twitter, LinkedIn). The survey results by Jobvites shows more recruiters are now using social media for hiring.
Source: Jobvites.com – 2014-social-recruiting-survey-infographic
LinkedIn is a particularly hot-shot for job seekers with Social Meeps revealed 89% of employers hired someone from there. Hence, it is considered one of the best online professional profile you can develop to boost your chances being spotted by potential employer.
LinkedIn provides the space for individual to create their professional online profile by providing basic job descriptions (Job experience, industry worked), etc and based on this, candidates can know related jobs posted by recruiters.
Source: socialmeep
So, how do i make myself ‘visible’ to potential employers?
Firstly is to have social media account. Employers are constantly on lookout for candidates online to get more information about the applicant beyond what the resume can give. More people now also refer their LinkedIn/Twitter when doing job hunting. The statistics below shows how social media plays a significant role in recruitment.
Source: MANG 2055- Recruitment and Selection Topic by Prof. Edgar Meyer
In addition to having social media accounts, information provided must be genuine and valid, for example, previous job experience and expertise, otherwise you will lose credibility.
This video shows what how you could make use of social media to get jobs
I agreed with Catherine (uosm2033) view that to maintain an authentic and professional accounts in social media, you need to be careful of what you POST online (Facebook Photos, offensive messages on twitter) and control visibility and connections on LinkedIn, especially if you had only a SINGLE IDENTITY.
To further enhance your professional profile, blogs and videos are a great way for one’s to promote themselves. Blog posts allow potential employers to know your true self and participate in conversations, and the interest or liking you might have. Beyond words, using videos as a way of creating personal profile is a powerful tool to do self-promoting. Prof Edgar Meyer show us a video during his lecture about how a guy finally managed to get a job by making a video of himself introducing to potential employers when previous attempts to get a job went unfruitful.
Developing and maintaining a professional profile helps portray a positive image of ourselves and attract job suitors which is massively important since we are graduating in 2 year’s time! I hope future employers are looking at me now at LinkedIn 🙂
References
Akiode, S. (2013). [INFOGRAPHIC] The Social Recruiting Pocket Guide – SocialMeep. [online] SocialMeep. Available at: http://socialmeep.com/infographic-the-social-recruiting-pocket-guide/ [Accessed 2 Dec. 2014].
Hunt, C. (2014). Standing Out in a Crowd – Developing Online Professional Profiles. [online] UOSM 2033 Living and Working on the Web. Available at: https://adamstiles93.wordpress.com/2014/11/06/standing-out-in-a-crowd-developing-online-professional-profiles-2/ [Accessed 2 Dec. 2014].
Kasper, K. (2014). The 2014 Social Recruiting Survey Results. [online] Jobvite. Available at: http://www.jobvite.com/blog/2014-social-recruiting-survey-infographic/ [Accessed 2 Dec. 2014].
yiming@ SotonMANG2049 
Hi Yiming!
Decent blog post on developing professional online profile. The infographic definitely captured all the points that you have discussed. I liked how you pointed out that one could build a professional online profile using LinkedIn.
Also, you mentioned that Blog post could enhance an individual’s employability prospects, bring me back to the same question I post to Jeanne.
I want to understand more about your views on blogging as being used to create part of an authentic online professional profile. Although I totally agree with blogs being able to give more of an insight of the ‘whole’ individual if employers and recruiters want a bigger picture of the individual, but do you think employers will take the time to read through our blogs? Especially when they have thousands of applications pending.
I look forward to reading your future entries. 🙂
Hi tor (wei seong),
This will again bring back the question of being UNIQUE and INTERACTIVE. The first thing to do before creating your blog is to identify who is your TARGET AUDIENCE. After which you can try following them on twitter and responding to their tweets or participate in their forums/comments. The content in the blog must be relavant and PROFESSIONAL, stating what you are good at. Get people in the community to participate in your posts and increase your online presence. I belive overtime potential employers will took notice and maybe even be part of your discussion groups! Of course all these requires intensive hard work and you must really know the online world well and make use of available tools to do that !