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Digital Identity for Employability Your ‘Digital Tattoo’ Why is this important? What is online about you? Take charge of what is online We like to talk to students about how they present themselves online, as this is becoming more and more important to your employability. A lot of employers look online to find extra information about potential employees now, and most report they have made some decisions about who to employ based on what they found – whether it was a positive or a negative decision. Some people call the information you put on line your ‘digital tattoo’ – because you cannot necessarily remove it all. Information gets copied and saved by companies who can benefit from it, other people can put information online about you too. So you have some control, but it is limited. We’re going to talk a little bit about how you can take control of what people will find out about you online. Example – Paris Brown UK Youth Crime Commissioner – Daily Mail – Tweets. Can happen – some papers like to bad mouth the NHS. So that’s one side of this. The other side is presenting yourself well – e.g. LinkedIn.
Have you Googled yourself? Google.co.uk Pipl.com Socialmention.com Reppler.com First of all, have a search for your name online. Search using a major search engine like Google, using quotation marks for the best results. There are other search engines that are designed to help you search for people like pipl.com. And if you really want to look deeply at your online reputation there are these other sites, but they are probably of more use to celebrities. It is worth searching after the session, we’ve had students do this and find old photos they’d put on Myspace years ago which wouldn’t be appropriate for their new career as a teacher. Onlineidcalculator.com
Create a web presence? LinkedIn.com ePortfolio You might also want to take control of what people find when they search for you by setting up a page that you can direct people to. LinkedIn is a career focussed social networking site. You can set up what is basically an online profile/CV, and connect with other people in your area of work.
This is what your profile might look like on there. Find a professional looking photo of yourself, and keep your activity on there work focused.
Create a web presence? LinkedIn.com ePortfolio Laura has mentioned that you will be creating an ePortfolio, and this is something that you could also use to show off your learning.
Become part of your community? Online Communities NMC strongly advises not to: Share confidential information online. Post inappropriate comments about colleagues or patients. Use social networking sites to bully or intimidate colleagues. Pursue personal relationships with patients or service users. Distribute sexually explicit material. Use social networking sites in any way which is unlawful. Keep an eye out for online communities full of people in your profession where you can support each other. However the NMC has a code regarding all uses of social networking sites – “The code states that nurses and midwives must "uphold the reputation of your profession at all times" (NMC 2008), while students must "uphold the reputation of your chosen profession at all times" (NMC 2009a). This means that conduct online and conduct in the real world should be judged in the same way, and should be at a similar high standard. Nurses and midwives will put their registration at risk, and students may jeopardise their ability to join our register, if they:” The NHS have a confidentiality policy - http://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/conf-policy-1.pdf - They note that “Person-identifiable information is anything that contains the means to identify a person, e.g. name, address, postcode, date of birth, NHS number, National Insurance number etc. Even a visual image (e.g. photograph) is sufficient to identify an individual. Any data or combination of data and other information, which can indirectly identify the person, will also fall into this definition. “ We use social networks to talk to our friends in the same way we’d talk to them face-to-face – but in reality we have to be more careful because online the whole world can overhear you. Lots of people have got into trouble as they have forgotten this.
Online Etiquette and Learning Edge How to avoid upset Keep it short Respect Remember jokes and comments can lose their meaning online, also people on your course might not know you as well as your friends. If you are having a discussion online – keep posts short and encourage others into the conversation. More formal – not for sharing like Facebook Respect – It’s about learning together, and less about winning arguments.
Contact peter.beaumont@edgehill.ac.uk laura.taylor@edgehill.ac.uk Notes and Resources goo.gl/tRXo7