Covid-19 Job Hunt To do#4: Brush up your professional presence

You need a professional presence. If you are in tech, business, or any other office work — or have plans to be — you need a presence online. Why? The reasons and trends of modernity that have led to this deserve an entire article of its own, but to put it short its because of this: Those who stand out get hired. Those who don’t get fired.

So let’s get right to how we should think about our digital presence and the steps that we need to take in regards to them:

1. Informal Social Media: This is the one that we’ve been warned about for over a decade now. A lot of companies will now ask for your social media links: Facebook and Twitter being the main two. Thankfully they’re for the most part optional. Thing is — there will always be the risk that they’ll do some sort of cursory check anyway if you end up as one of the final candidates through a quick Google search. There’s a few ways to deal with this: make a duplicate professional one and set your personal one to private, just clean up your normal one, or don’t have an account at all. The option is yours.
2. Professional Social Media: For the most part, this really only pertains to Linkedin and Quora. If you’re a writer, journalist, or other type of profession who’s whole work is public-facing however, some of the platforms mentioned in #1 like Twitter may now be considered professional. Github for the software engineers. The recommendation in terms of content “cleanliness” remain the same, but with the added requirement of “keep it updated.” Your resume should have more details than your Linkedin profile, but if there’s a chunk missing from the Linkedin that’s available on the resume — that looks suspicious. Worst case it’ll seem like you’re lying on the resume and not putting it in public because it’d be rebuked. Better case it’ll seem like you’re scatterbrained or don’t have the discipline to maintain your responsibilities.
3. Personal Professional Digital Media: This is the big one that separates the wheat from the chaff. This is a personal blog, publication, podcast, or portfolio. For certain occupations that require more of a “show” than a resume may have (ie. Designers), a portfolio is mandatory. But even if it isn’t, engaging in these additional areas of your profession shows to recruiters that you’re more than a cog in the machine to be just another resume in the pile. It shows a passion, can serve as a talking point during the interviews, and even multifunctions as a way for people to remember you after networking (or interviewing!)

Looking at that: I get that it could seem like the cons outweigh the pros. This media presence requires so much to maintain, and once its created, it has to be continuously done — it’s just extra work to maintain competitiveness. On one hand, that’s true. And that’s just the unavoidable reality. Everyone’s in the same game. Don’t play it, and you lose. Playing isn’t a choice — you play by default because everyone else does. So better to play it ahead of the curve than behind.

So let’s make the most of the situation. There’s a saying along the lines of: If you don’t tell the story yourself, others will tell/create it for you. Meaning that if you leave it to others to form an opinion, they will — and it more often than not won’t be what you want it to be. The flip side of that is that if you DO actively go to craft it, that power is now in YOUR hands. And that’s an amazingly powerful thing to own. Because now you can be more than a cog. Not just “Associate Software Engineer II” or “Marketing Associate LR 7,” but “Sandy Jones, Growth Guru.” The first two get replaced and downsized, the last one gets the bonus to stay on.

And there’s another way to look at it. For the most part outside of Linkedin (which recruiters very often give a quick glance at before your phone interview), having these assets will passively keep you in-tune with your competition. Keeping your Github updated means you’re continuing to evolve your coding craft. Being a thought leader and writing articles means you’re going deeper into your field and actually adding to the conversation. Compiling a portfolio means that you’re packaging yourself as a unique presence, one that if so wanted: could branch off independently for your own firm or at least be much more desirable by other companies.

For those of you who’ve heard of passive income — it’s even more amazing, because these will serve as passive sources of job offers and referrals. The weird thing is that though we create all of these assets to package ourselves to seem more appealing to get the job: once done right, these make us more free to leave them and have clarity in who we are, what value we bring, and what we can do.