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.