Social media is an increasingly valuable tool to recruiters in screening potential employees, so making an authentic online professional profile is now an extremely valuable tool to an individual’s employment prospects. A survey from Jobvite shows that in 2014, employers plan to increase their recruitment via social networks by 73%. The image below shows the top social networks that are currently being used for recruiting, with LinkedIn being the highest with 94%, followed by Facebook with 66%.
Due to LinkedIn being the most popular recruitment tool according to the Jobvite survey and having 414 million members, this is where I am going to focus my attention.
So, how do you go about creating an authentic online professional profile?
I myself have not created a LinkedIn profile yet; however, from my research and the tips I am about to relay I believe I have gained solid foundations to create an authentic LinkedIn profile.
The main focus today is authenticity and how we accomplish this within our online professional profile.
Here are my 5 tips:
- Choose a professional profile picture that represents you. To create authenticity, try to use a picture that can also be found on your other social networking profiles.
- BE HONEST. Make sure to portray the professional persona you will transfer into the real working world. Do not exaggerate your skills and knowledge.
- Make sure to list all relevant work experience with reliable companies and references and clearly demonstrate the skills you have gained from them.
- LinkedIn is made to help you expand your online professional persona so take advantage of all the helpful tools, including the use of endorsements. However, make sure that these are people you trust and preferably people you have worked with before.
- Be selective with your connections. To reiterate, let these be people you trust: work colleagues, university friends and previous employers.
Many recruitment sites and company careers pages allow you to apply via your LinkedIn profile and, as stated earlier, more and more companies are using social networks to screen potential employees. Thus, creating an authentic online professional profile is a must have in todays working world.
Hopefully, you have now gained an insight into how to accomplish this and will join me in creating an authentic LinkedIn profile to aid our employability prospects.
References:
LinkedIn Newsroom About LinkedIn (2016)
Jobvite Social Recruiting Survey (2014)
BBC Job hunting: How to promote yourself online (2013)
For Dummies How to Create Effective and Professional Online Profiles (2016)
Alice Brown 
Hi Alice,
Really nice post! I think that this topic is so important, especially for people like us, students who are actively searching for jobs and placements. You have showed the depth of your research and a deeper understanding of the topic by including several survey results, which is good as it gives the reader a basic understanding of how building a professional profile can benefit oneself.
You make some relevant points when it comes to building an authentic and reliable professional profile. I agree with your tip that it is important to present your true self through a well-chosen profile picture. I think your point of keeping the picture consistent throughout your other profiles is really important. You have given a great foundation for starting up a truthful professional profile, but I feel that there are certain aspects that you have missed out. Such as privacy settings and how to actually make use of the profile. It needs to be accessible to employers, but keeping most of your profile private to avoid any potential stalking or identity theft. Obviously, this profile should be used with caution as posting inappropriate or offensive content could jeopardise the way employers think of you.
I enjoyed reading this post and I look forward to hearing more from you!
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Sorry about the long response, I got really into the topic!
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