CU DM Portfolio – Online Professional Presence Progress

This is the RKL3030MP Professional Practice Portfolio: Media Production development progress journal, which will be used to communicate the results of research and development for the self-branding and identity phase.

Below are the logs of each phase of this journal written and reported on weekly basis from 4th of January 2022.

1. Research

Nowadays, employers get to know you professionally and personally by a simple click on professional social networks such as Linkedin or by searching on professional portals like Monster Jobs or Behance. As a result, establishing an online professional profile through social and professional networking sites is critical for a digital designer like me (WLU 2022).

Employers will be able to find and assess someone like me as a possible candidate more easily if I have a strong online presence. So I need to consider that, what would an employer find if they Googled my name or searched for a keyword like “digital designer southeast asia”? What does my digital footprint say about me?

My online presence can help me show who I am, develop trust and credibility, demonstrate my enthusiasm, and set me out from the crowd. To build a great online image of myself and make my footprint accessible more easily (Bradford, 2022), I need to be on the most popular channels and ways that make my professional profile presentable and allow employers and businesses to get in touch with me if they want to reach me.

Here is the list of methods and channels I need to consider for my online presence:

• LinkedIn
• Social Media for Designers (Behance & Dribble)
• Job Networks (Monster.com)
• Personal Website (Portfolio + Blog)

2. Development

2.1 LinkedIn

LinkedIn has millions of professional members and is quickly increasing. LinkedIn’s aim is to connect the world’s professionals in order to make them more productive and successful. I will be searchable when I have a complete profile on LinkedIn (Fremont, 2019). Many recruiters look for future employees on this channel and use it to find specific job openings before putting them on a job board.

Since I have setup a LinkedIn profile account from before, I will be going to update my existing profile and revise the content with my latest professional information. Here are the areas that I will be going to update and improve:

• About
• Experience (Career History)
• Education
• Skills

The followings are screenshots of the updates applied to my existing profile content:

Here is a snapshot of my updated LinkedIn profile:

Here is the link to my LinkedIn profile: https://sg.linkedin.com/in/schah

2.2 Behance

Behance is a social media platform and it is focused to showcase and discover creative works for designers and businesses. As for a designer, it is essential to have a profile and have their work listed on Behance. I created my Behance profile a while ago and kept it updated with my recent works.

At this stage, I have updated my existing Behance with some of my works, my new Homepage URL and my profile picture and here is the final result:

My Behance profile is available at https://behance.net/schah

2.3 Monster.com

To be present on job portals and networks I chose to have a profile on Monster Jobs. Monster.com is a global employment site that is active in Europe and Southeast Asia – especially in Singapore. Since I’m looking for jobs in Europe (Germany) and in Singapore, my first choice is to be on Monster.com. I created my professional profile on Monster while ago, but recently have updated it as you can see below:

Based on my experience working in Singapore, Monster is more considered for more senior positions there compared to other networks such as JobStreet.com.

2.4 Personal Website

In addition to my online portfolio and in order to extend my footprint on the net, I have added a Weblog and a Photoblog to my personal website. Having a blog will help me to write content regarding related topics to my expertise and hobbies which could showcase my knowledge to potential employers who visit my website and would like to hire someone like me.

My weblog is available at schah.online/blog