Thing 4 & 5 - Online presence and professional image

Google is my one-stop shop for everything I need, yet, it has never occurred to me to find myself on this search giant. Googling oneself sounds like a pretty egoistical thing to be doing, and rather scary as well, to think what others can find out about you in just a click of the mouse. 

With some trepidation, I typed my name into the Google search bar, and found myself among the top three search results. To my relieve, the searches were related to my professional profile. I am thankful that my personal profiles such as Facebook did not appear in the search, since I prefer to separate my personal life from my work.

Judging from my search results, I do not seem to have a strong professional presence online, which I think will become increasingly important as the world goes digital. I intend to work on improving my presence, with perhaps some activity on LinkedIn being one of my initial moves. 

Since part of 23 Things is about learning from others, I have been reading the blogs and tweets of peers doing this course. It is wonderful being able to read more personal writings by others, and learn from them within an informal setting. Seeing the person behind and beyond their professional backgrounds is very rewarding indeed, and reminds us all that there is more to university life than completing a PhD. Since these blog posts are rather personalised at this stage, I am not sure how they can be used to improve employability, perhaps 23 Things will show me more as we progress.  

Thing 1 - My dabblings in the virtual world

Hello there, welcome to my blog.

I am a first year PhD student in the University of Surrey. I am enjoying my PhD experience and am considering working towards a career in academia. But, I am not quite sure where to begin, which brings me to one of the reasons why I am participating in 23 Things. I am interested in learning how to conduct public engagement online, as well as what opportunities there are for networking, sharing ideas with and learning from peers and professionals in the virtual space.

I like the idea that 23 Things adopts a hands-on approach and gets us to dabble our feet into online social media from the very beginning. I am not technologically savvy, and the virtual world looks somewhat daunting to me. Besides having a personal Facebook account, I have not used any other social media platforms. Nor do I know what it means to use these platforms professionally. Being shown how to navigate my way around the virtual world, and the opportunities which social media visibility provides, seems too good an offer to miss! I am hoping that at the end of this course, I will be sufficiently proficient in using blogs and online social networking platforms for public engagement. I would also like to maintain a professional profile on platforms such as LinkedIn to increase my online visibility.

So, here it is, my first blog to kick-start this learning journey.