I Don't Want to Show ME Off

This week's reading was about professional networking. I read a few articles that talk about networking, professionally, via online means. See, it's one thing for me to hand out a copy of my resume to prospective employers, or to e-mail a copy to someone with whom I'm trying to network. Posting it for everyone to see is entirely different. While it's less effort for me because I don't have to send my resume to individual people, it's also much more revealing of myself. It's trading laziness for security.

I'm very stingy with my facebook profile, for it does not reveal my address, phone number, or other personal information at any time. Even the little amount it does reveal, I am able to control who sees. The header of my resume contains my phone number and address. If I'm so stingy with my facebook profile, what are the chances that I'll be in a hurry to post my resume? Very small.

Do I want people to be able to google me? Realistically, no. It would be a little too invasive of my privacy. It's nice to be able to have an online persona that is recognizable and easily findable, but at what price? In my opinion, the price is too high. As a humungous fan of face-to-face interaction, I would rather use other peoples' online information to track them down, to have a face-to-face conversation with them. I have no problem connecting and interacting with people online, it's actually the people that I don't want to interact with, who I'll ultimately end up interacting with because they've tracked me down, that keep me from publishing a back-door to my life on the internet (sometimes literally).

Everything I see says that networking is the most important thing that you can do. I think that becoming the most dedicated, educated, and hard-working person will be enough to set you apart from everyone else. Having a niche that makes you so special will have employers either seeking you, or refusing to turn down employment to you. I plan to have a very specialized career track where I know exactly where I fit, and where there will always be room.

Social Networking on Steroids, Speed, and X

Yes, you read that correctly.

Take 21 seconds to read point #6 of "Working Together...When Apart."

I am the Project Manager for Kogod's class KSB-252: Washington Initiative [Instructor: Allison Holcomb]. The goal of the class is to execute an AU-wide marketing initiative surrounding the Help the Homeless Walkathon, which is sponsored by Fannie Mae and takes place on the National Mall on November 17th.

Our team of 8 meets once weekly, and as such it is my responsibility to make sure that everyone is doing their jobs outside of the meetings. Each member of my team has a lot to do, and my job is essentially 8-fold in trying to keep up with it all. I require my team members to produce finite results for every meeting, and as such I am able to keep them accountable to the group.

I also take ITEC-200 with Professor Melander. You'd better believe that there's a wiki page for that course too. Blackboard, in my opinion, is not the best tool for keeping a class organized. This is why I commend Professor Melander so much for using the wiki pages. I had no idea the things that were possible with wiki's. Likewise, the blog for Brendan Monaghan, our guest speaker two classes ago, featured an awesome video about making a wiki page for a team or an event. My team needs to be able to edit documents together, and collaborate on our project. The above sources [i.e. Professor Melander] inspired me to make a wiki for my team. So, I created ksb252.wetpaint.com. Wetpaint is another site that hosts wiki's, although it does have advertising.

My team members have been responsible for editing several pages, and making noticeable contributions each week in preparation for meetings and events. As a result, our team is very connected, both in and out of the boardroom (we meet in the Kogod boardroom). Our client is very happy with our presentation, and our team is able to get things done in a no-excuse [online] environment that I feel promotes punctuality and cooperation.

So, when I read point #6 above, it made me very excited because for my e-connected team, this is something that I had actually done. And, I was able to related to the article instead of taking it with a grain of salt and much skepticism.

Thank you, Professor.