Topic 3 Summary - #UOSM2008

http://mrewert.pbworks.com/f/1328664416/summary.jpg

Another great topic this week with some great discussions around users blog posts, as well as a very active twitter feed. What really caught my eye was the variety of ways in which people interpreted the questions, and then the discussion that followed this.

Many bloggers focussed on LinkedIn (including myself), as a resource that is valuable in creating an authentic online presence, mainly due to the way the website is designed to help users to achieve this.

Some focussed on the more social networking side, using twitter to interact with potential employers and follow relevant companies and organisations.

By tweeting directly at a company it instantly puts your name/profile on the radar. Especially if you combine this with a blog post, for example if Tesco tweets about a new scheme it’s launching, you can pick up on this write a blog post about it and include the link when you tweet them.

There was also a lot of discussion of whether the twitter character limit of 140 was enough to express an opinion or point. I believe from what I saw that it was, but more characters could definitely be useful.

However the most interesting fact for me was the fact that employers would be more worried if they didn’t find anything at all on potential employees. 5-7 years ago I barely had any online presence if any, and now it is a necessity to have one. This makes it very easy for users to get left behind; my grandparents have no online presence at all, not even an e-mail account. Could they be classed as a digital tourist?!

I think that by using a combination of all these angles with regular updates an authentic online profile can be created that will have a positive impact on the users employability.