How Online Presence Can Help a Student’s Career Path

Have you already made up your mind of being your own boss, while in college? Having and maintaining an online presence can be helpful.

Most employers are ditching the traditional way of hiring employees, or rather trying to find out more about their prospective employees, by following their online trail. There are many who actually hire people based on their online presence, and don’t advertise their open positions at all.

For most freelancers such as aspiring graphic designer, maintaining an Internet presence can be helpful for their potential career path. Maintaining a digital portfolio allows you to establish yourself as a young media guru, and paves the way for professional connections in the future. Having personal profiles on websites such as WordPress, YouTube & LinkedIn allows you to easily share your work with potential employers and also helps you to spread your brand name.

Changing Scenario

Today, students are facing a different kind of job market than they did in the past. Employers are not only tracing your digital footprints but also viewing portfolios and resumes online and learning about you with the click of a link. And that is why many also feel that the traditional resume could disappear completely in the future.

Websites such as about.me, WordPress, among several others, are best ways for you to showcase your skills, as students. In fact, building a digital presence can benefit not just student writers and artists but those entering essentially any field.

Here are more tips on how to dress up your online presence. Obviously, it starts with finding out what’s published about you on the Internet first.

Google Yourself

As the popularity of social media rises in the digital age, we have less and less privacy — which could potentially be dangerous for students applying for jobs if they don’t check what information is floating around in cyberspace first.

Everything you do is adding up to a complete picture. So see what information is immediately available to potential employers and what comes up in general when your name is searched.

Because social media is a key element of modern communication, and “because much of that communication is public, it’s no surprise some recruiters and hiring managers are tuning in.

Some websites like socialmention.com and klout.com (more of social reputation management tools) determine your social reputation score by producing a composite score from the positive, negative and neutral information that’s available when you type your name into a search engine.

The Rise of the Digital Portfolio

When it comes to creating a portfolio online, it’s important to focus on your specific job target. To build your own “personal brand” on the Internet, it’s important to determine what makes you unique. College students could focus on their creativity, for example, or their technological skills.

If you’re pursuing a job in one field, try and tie in skills from other experiences that you might have developed, too. Employers also want to view more than just your credentials. Creating your own website or displaying your work on a larger platform gives you some control over what is found.

Online portfolios typically include an “About Me” page as well as work samples and a resume. When creating an online portfolio, you should provide a “reason for someone to want to hire you” and focus on what distinguishes you from the rest.

Most sites provide pre-formatted layouts and allow you to simply fill in your information; others like wix.com offer more design freedom.

Maintaining a Presence

Once you have created an online presence, it’s also important to update your site regularly because you never know who might be searching for a potential employee at a given time. There are many employers who are searching for candidates online without even posting job listings first.

And, many experts and career centers say that maintaining a blog through sites such as WordPress can benefit a student as well, as they provide an opportunity to showcase your interests and writing skills.

In general, maintaining an online presence makes your work more easily accessible. It also makes it easy to share your expertise. Just shoot a link to anyone interested and they’ll have access to your work at their fingertips in a few seconds.

What You Post Online Can Cost You a Job

Have a picture of you, completely drunk at some party? That maybe alright as long as the picture is on your mobile phone, but if its online and comes up when people Google you, it may not be something to boast about and could cost you a job…

A decade ago, job searching was still a fairly neat, straightforward process. A job seeker applied for a position and was asked in for an interview, references were checked, and an offer was extended. The proliferation of social media over the past several years has added a layer of complexity to the hiring process, creating more virtual hoops for job seekers to jump through before hearing, “you’re hired.”

Besides the websites specifically geared toward professional networking, most people use social networks for personal reasons – connecting with friends and family, sharing photos, and gathering and disseminating interesting information. However, while job seekers may view their postings as personal, any public profile is fair game for employers, who increasingly use these sites to gauge whether a candidate will be the right fit for their organization.

In fact, according to a new CareerBuilder survey, 43 percent of employers use social networking sites to research job candidates, up from 39 percent last year and 36 percent in 2012. Based on the survey, this trend shows no sign of slowing: 12 percent of employers don’t currently research candidates on social media but plan to start.

The employers who are already searching sites aren’t impressed with what they’re finding, which has potentially serious implications for job seekers. Fifty-one percent of employers who research job candidates on social media say they’ve found content that led them to not hire the candidate, up from 43 percent last year and 34 percent in 2012.

What employers don’t want to find
What makes these sites so appealing – the freedom to speak one’s mind in an open forum and instantaneously share photos and information – is also what can end up costing you a job. Photos from your friend’s bachelor party may appear innocent enough to share, or that off-color joke may seem too funny not to post, but those types of actions can come back to haunt you. Forty-six percent of employers say they’ll pass on candidates who posted provocative or inappropriate photographs or information, and 41 percent will reject job seekers who posted information about drinking or using drugs.

Other social media discoveries that have turned off employers include job seekers who bad-mouthed a previous company or fellow employee (36 percent); had poor communication skills (32 percent); made discriminatory comments related to race, gender and religion (28 percent); and lied about their qualifications (25 percent).

How to get your online presence in professional shape
While especially important for active job seekers, all working professionals should keep the following tips in mind for ensuring their social activity is employer-friendly:

Pump up your privacy settings: Most social networking sites allow users to customize their privacy settings so they can control who sees what. For instance, you may be able to set up your profile so that only your “friends” or “followers” can see what you post. You may also be able to restrict others from posting information to your profile, as well as monitor posts you’ve been tagged in so nothing goes up without your approval. The good news is many job seekers are already taking such measures to avoid over-sharing with potential employers. Nearly half of workers surveyed only share posts with friends and family, 41 percent have their profile set to private and 18 percent keep separate professional and personal profiles.

Think beyond social networking sites: While cleaning up your profiles is important, your online footprint may extend beyond those sites, and everything you do on the Web is searchable. Forty-five percent of employers use search engines such as Google to research potential job candidates. If you don’t know what’s floating in cyberspace that might get you into trouble with potential employers, do some digging to see what social media “dirt” comes up when you search your name.

Use your social presence for good: Being active on social media can actually work in your favor if what employers find piques their interest. One third of employers who research candidates on social networking sites say they’ve found content that made them more likely to hire a candidate, while 23 percent say such content directly led to them hiring the candidate. In fact, employers say they’ve hired someone based on their social networking presence for reasons including: they got a good feel for the job candidate’s personality (46 percent), the job seeker’s site conveyed a professional image (43 percent), and the candidate received awards and accolades (31 percent).

So, use your social media presence as an opportunity to showcase what makes you unique, well-rounded and the type of worker an employer would want to hire.

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