In order to enhance my job-hunting effort I should try and
maintain a strong digital footprint. It is vital that my online image is
consistent and consistently good. Leicester Award provided me with the tools to
measure my online presence accompanied with some general guidelines on how to
make my digital footprint more attractive to prospect employers.
To begin with, I have started making posts at my blog
relevant on how individuals can increase their digital footprint and attract
employers. What is more, I have started microblogging, retweeting helpful posts
from Marketing organizations and keeping my twitter profile updated with
the latest Marketing news. In this way I can show to future employers that I
possess the so-required commercial awareness of my domain. I have also
demonstrated commercial awareness by posting useful articles or actively
participating in Marketing conversations. Moreover, I added to my circles
organizations and companies that I am greatly interested or have already
applied to them. I have joined causes and added some of my interests in every
profile. In order to make my connection’s circle broader I have joined groups so
that I can communicate with people having the same interests with me.
What is more I have created a neat, easy to read, up-to-date
blog and I had also made sure that I link all my social media profiles to it. I
have witnessed an increase in visitors, followers and connections when keeping
all my profiles updated and well presented. Furthermore, I have added all
relevant marketing work and extracurricular activities in my profiles to give
employers a more clear view about me. In order to make it more interesting and
easier to read for employers and to demonstrate my creativity skill I have
created an online interactive CV and attached to my blog. In that way employers
can instantly access my education, work experience and interests.
On the one hand, Leicester Award helped me recognize some of
my key skills and strengths and enabled me to include them in my online CV
making me more competitive. On the other hand I recognized some of my
weaknesses and tried to turn them into strengths by setting targets to achieve
within the year.
I have been also introduced to presence management which
demands a small amount of my daily time but it will surely pay my back in the
end of the day. In order to keep strengthening my digital footprint I am trying
to daily update my social media’s status, reply to people’s messages, comments
and posts, share news and updates and visit my blog to check for new posts.
This daily process is of great importance to me given that I am mostly
interested in Digital Marketing and in that way I am showing to perspective
employers that I am able to maintain and handle social media successfully in
daily basis.
What is more Leicester Award has provided me with some tools
like “hootsuite” in order to make my daily social media management easier and
more efficient. This site brings all of my social media together in one place
enabling me to send out one message across several networks all at once.
Another really important topic that it was covered during
Leicester Award was the importance of Search Engine Optimization techniques and
how “tags” or “labels” can help me become more visible in search engines. For
example I was prompted to include my name in all my posts so that when an manage
to create a quite popular name, this is an easy way to make sure my results
come up before everyone else’s. Tagging posts have another important function
as well when it comes to job applications. I can always come back to my blog
and click on a particular tag, which will bring up all the posts that have been
tagged with that word. This makes putting job applications together much
simpler as I don't have to remember all the specific details of my experiences.
Moreover, I intend to raise my profile by joining and
actively participating in conversations while interacting with persons I want
to build relationships with like future employers. This can be achieved by
writing insightful and interesting blog posts and sharing them with your
network or connecting with people on companies I’m interested in working in.
All in all, in order to be visible and accessible to
employers I need to:
- Create correct and full profiles
- Be active online
- Let people know who I am
- Tag my name and my blog spots
- Post links to interesting articles or videos