Cybervetting and Curating Online Identities

Digital Literacies: Blog Post 3

In the last blog post I looked at raising digital presence for employability through building online networks. This week I explore how digital presence can be built through curation and the impact it can have on employability.  In my search for literature this week, I have discovered that the word ‘curating’ is used to refer to various digital practices. Within this post I will explore the concept of curating online identities for the purpose of employability.

Cybervetting

Brenda Berkelaar and Patrice Buzzanell (2015) have researched how employers have been evaluating online information about potential candidates during the selection and hiring process. They call this practice ‘cybervetting’ and it is being used to find informal information available online about candidates which they may not have intended for the employers to use in making their judgment call. This could be considered as unethical but there is no law against it that I know of so the best we can do for now is be aware that it is happening and work out how to deal with it.

Employers are looking for both the “presence and absence of different types of online information to make sense of job candidates” (pg. 86). Because of this, candidates need to be aware that it is not just their CV, references, or interview that is being used in the employer’s ‘sensemaking’ process (pg. 107); their social media accounts may be used too. Berkelaar and Buzzanell (pg. 86) consider that “cybervetting increases demand on individuals to curate their digital professional image.” The issue is that individuals may not know how to meet this demand.

Based on ideas from the text, I have created the following infographic with tips on how jobseekers can curate their digital identity and build their “digital career capital” (pg. 106) in preparation for possible cybervetting.

Unintended Audience

Benson, Morgan, and Filippaios (2014, pg 521) drew attention to the fact that employers have the expectation that graduates are aware of how to use social media well. However, it is not the case that graduates really are aware, especially when “employers use social media to check behavior patterns of graduates.” I think employers assume students would not post content that might damage their chances of work, but it is a strong possibility that students are posting for their intended audience – their friends and family – and not for potential employers to view. Realising this is a digital literacy.

Building an awareness of the practice of cybervetting, might help students to be more mindful of how they represent themselves by curating their digital presence as a well-rounded professional person who is ready for employment but this requires education.

Inequality and Missed Opportunities

Deursen and Dijk (2014) wrote about an issue that seems to have more relevance with every area of digital literacy I explore. They found that people of low-level education don’t use the Internet for capital-enhancing activities (pg. 511) such as exploring career opportunities so I could presume that they are not using it to consciously build a professional online identity. Unfortunately, as the knowledge gap widens and reflects offline inequalities, people of lower educational levels continue to miss out on employment opportunities that could enable social mobility.

The Need for Feedback

I realise that many institutions have a careers centre or advisor that do CV checks and practice interviews but I think more is needed. I think it is a step in the right direction that I have seen workshops advertised on things such as building a LinkedIn profile. However, I think an additional service is needed which offers students the chance to be cybervetted and receive feedback. It is easy enough to Google yourself but you don’t know how you might be perceived when your information, images, and networks are reconstructed and decontextualised by others.

I think feedback is incredibly important even if it embarrasses you. When I was 20 I had an interview with a rather mean HR executive but he taught me a lesson. The interview had been going fairly well but then he asked me “What does your email mean?” I hadn’t thought about the fact that the email address I had sent my CV from was one that I had created when I was 15 and it was made up my favourite colour, rock band, and the year I was born.  As I sat in my new suit trying to be at my most professional, I hadn’t realised it would be my email address that embarrassed me. Feel free to cringe. He suggested I get a more ‘grown up’ email address.

It was harsh but useful feedback. I think (I hope!) that most young people are savvy enough to having an email address that is their actual name or something sensible but I’m sure they are facing many more digital issues than what their email is. This is why it is so important to promote digital literacies related to online identities and the very real connection to employability. Having an online presence makes people more open to exposure and digital literacy skills such as being aware of curating online identities needs to be taught or opportunities will be lost.

References

Benson, V., Morgan, S., & Filippaios, F. (2014). Social career management: Social media and employability skills gap. Computers in Human Behavior, 30, 519–525. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2013.06.015

Berkelaar, B. L., & Buzzanell, P. M. (2015). Online Employment Screening and Digital Career Capital Exploring Employers’ Use of Online Information for Personnel Selection. Management Communication Quarterly, 29(1), 84–113. http://doi.org/10.1177/0893318914554657

Deursen, A. J. van, & Dijk, J. A. van. (2014). The digital divide shifts to differences in usage. New Media & Society, 16(3), 507–526. http://doi.org/10.1177/1461444813487959

 

Digital Presence & Employability

Digital Literacies: Blog Post 2

I remember looking for my first job in 2002 when I was 17. I had some sort of CV that I had typed up on the computer and printed out on an incredibly noisy dot matrix printer. I then went round the local shops and restaurants handing in my CV. I also looked up ‘Situations Vacant’ in the back of the local newspaper and either posted my CV or dropped it in. I had the Internet at home but it didn’t even occur to me to look for jobs there – I only went online to use MSN Messenger and download music. I wonder what I would have found if I had gone online to search for a job but I get the feeling it would have been more useful for ‘professional’ jobs than someone looking for a part-time job as a student.

Luckily I eventually found jobs where I already had friends working and they got my foot in the door. If I had had the digital literacy skills, would I have found a wider range of employment opportunities sooner? I’m not even sure if many companies were using it to recruit staff at that time.

Networked Job Seeking

Today we have websites such as LinkedIn with around 400 milllion members in 200 countries and territories (LinkedIn, 2016). From conversations with colleagues, it seems that LinkedIn is thee site to have your CV on but it is a social network and not just a CV upload site and after joining it a few days ago, I have found that I am a little unsure of who I should be networking with. I see former colleagues popping up but I think I should maybe ‘connect’ with new people, but what does it mean to them if I ‘connect’? I’ll work it out.

I am already familiar with several online social networks. I use Twitter,  YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and WordPress so I know I can learn from observing the behaviours of others, through Youtube videos, from articles, and I pick things up quickly once I work out the social and cultural practices of the platform. I am in the lurking stage (Techopedia, 2016) with LinkedIn where I will try to get a sense of the network before participating more fully.  I also want to look at more models of good profiles and get feedback on mine before I start developing my network.

Social Media and Employability

Benson, Morgan, and Filippaios (2014) found that many young people use social networks and think they have a good understanding of them, but they actually lack knowledge of how to use social networks well to build social capital and “enhance their employability prospects” (pg. 519). Benson et al acknowledge that even though employability skills have been explicitly embedded within university courses, there is a need to provide “education regarding effective engagement with social networking sites” (pg. 524) as this has become necessary for employability as those with an effective network usually have more opportunities. Benson et al suggest that professional social networking skills should be included as learning outcomes during university studies as there is a need to improve “graduate employability in the era of the digital economy”(pg. 520).

Technology for Employability

The Jisc report on Technology for Employability (2015) explored the role of technology in supporting the development of student employability skills. The report describes five key ways to support development but the most interesting to me was about using “Digital communications and engagement with employers including development of digital identity” (pg. 7). The first step towards engaging with employers was to research, identify, and develop contacts and relationships then take steps to developing a digital identity and showcase a ‘rounded self’ and distinctiveness. The report suggests that institutional strategies should be made to embed technology for employability into policies, plans and processes.

Transcending the Classroom

For me, I have been lucky enough to have the opportunity to choose modules within my Masters course that require me to practice using a variety of online platforms to participate, create, and network. This practice has helped me to develop a digital identity and showcase my work. If I hadn’t taken the module Technology Enhanced Learning then I may not have learned how to use Twitter on a professional level, had the confidence to put videos on YouTube, or a reason to have this blog and a network of peers to share ideas with.

Learning to build my online presence has been one of the most valuable, transformative experiences of this course and I realise that many other students will not have had this experience if they didn’t take a module where it was part of the learning process. At first, it was a little scary having an audience beyond my classroom peers but I soon realised that interacting with people who are already ‘out there’ working on things that interest me, helps me imagine where I might be going next.  It has also given me a range of platforms to continue using even when this course has ended so my digital identity can continue to develop as long as I stay engaged with the networks I have been participating in and continue to expand those networks over time.

In future teaching positions, I would like to include more aspects of digital participation, creation, and networking within courses to let students have a more meaningful learning experience that transcends beyond the classroom and enables them to demonstrate a professional identity and have a greater chance of employment in the digital economy with their online practice as evidence of their abilities.

Implications

When I think about it, a CV isn’t a very effective way to represent someone who is fresh out of university or school. It might list your achievements and some interests but doesn’t really represent you as a unique personality and potential bonus to a company. I think that the internet allows us to represent ourselves in much more interesting ways but it requires some level of digital literacy to use the internet well to increase your digital presence in a way that makes you more employable. I think educators have to play a role in raising the digital literacy levels of their students throughout their education so that they can build a professional digital presence that will show who they are as a person and not just what they are on paper.  Some may think that you need a lot of luck when looking for a job but I think luck is actually preparation meeting opportunity. So if we prepare our students in advance by building their digital presence, hopefully they will have more opportunities when it comes time to find a job.

Beyond degrees and CVs

I have to admit that I have found most of my jobs through my networks of friends and colleagues who have recommended me. I have never actually found a job through any of the online jobsites. However, as my M. Ed comes to its conclusion in the next few months, I will start to look for a job and it will be an interesting development in my own digital literacy as I discover whether I still have more luck face-to-face, using my ‘real life’ networks or if I have successfully managed to build an online presence and developed my networks enough to find opportunities online.

References:

Benson, V., Morgan, S., & Filippaios, F. (2014). Social career management: Social
media and employability skills gap. Computers in Human Behavior, 30, 519–525.

Jisc (2015). Technology for Employability Report. Retrieved from       http://repository.jisc.ac.uk/6252/4/Technology_for_employability_-_quick_read_report.PDF

LinkedIn (2016). About Us. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/about-us

Network Image (2013). By Martin Grandjean. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_history

Techopedia (2016) Lurking. Retrieved from https://www.techopedia.com/definition/8156/lurking