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.
Ah, the blog posts may not be about your employability as such, they are more a tool to reflect on the things of the week and act as a record of what you thought at the time and what you plan to use and not use. At the end many researchers do turn their blogs into a blog about their research but others decide to hide it all away or just write about cake!
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