1. Using Social Media
to Enhance Employability
HEA Employability Staff Development
Network Event
Sue Beckingham
Sheffield Hallam University

2. What is Social Media
Technologies that
enable communication,
collaboration,
participation and
sharing.
Hughes A, 2009 for JISC
Social software,
software that
supports group
communications
Shirky C, 2003

3. Social Media is
a tool
for augmenting human social and collaborative abilities
a medium
for facilitating social connection and information interchange
an ecology
for enabling a "system of people, practices, values and
technologies in a particular local environment"
Suter, Alexander and Kaplan, 2005

4. Social Media: An Ecology
An ecology, habitat, or studio is simply the space for
fostering connections. Networks occur within something.
They are influenced by the environment and context of an
organization, school, or classroom. Certain ecologies are
more conducive to forming connections. ... Connection
barriers are aspects of an ecology. ... The nature of the
ecology influences the ease, type, and health of networks
created
(Siemans 2007)

5. Why Social Media is important
The power of online connections
• maintain connections
• develop global connections
• ongoing 24/7 networking
• opportunity to learn and share
• ability to be known and found
• develop a personal brand
• six degrees of separation
• recruitment/job seeking

6. However….
an unprofessional
profile can be more damaging than
not having one at all.

7. Increasingly used for recruitment
Jobvite Social Recruiting Survey 2010
58.1% of 600 surveyed have
successfully recruited
through a social network

9. http://www.unilever.co.uk/careers/

11. Jobs and Placements on Twitter

13. The Guardian Careers
Twitter Challenge
#twitterjobchallenge

14. Higher Order Thinking Skills
Creating
Evaluating Blooms
Analysing Revised
Applying
Taxonomy
Understanding (2001) Anderson and Krathwohl
Remembering
Lower Order Thinking Skills

15. Communication Spectrum
• Collaborating • Replying
• Moderating • Posting and Blogging
• Negotiating • Networking
• Debating • Contributing
• Commenting • Chatting
• Net meeting, Skyping, • E-mailing
Video Conferencing • Twittering/microblogging
• Reviewing • Instant Messaging
• Questioning • Texting
Churches, A. (2009) Blooms Revised Digital Taxonomy
http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Bloom%27s+Digital+Taxonomy

16. Blooms Revised Digital Taxonomy
HOTS Higher Order Thinking Skills
designing, constructing, planning, producing, inventing, devising, making,
Creating programming, filming, animating, blogging, video blogging, mixing, re-mixing, wiki-
ing, publishing, videocasting, podcasting, directing, broadcasting.
checking, hypothesising, critiquing, experimenting, judging, testing, detecting,
Evaluating monitoring, blog commenting, reviewing, posting, moderating, collaborating,
networking, refactoring, testing.
Comparing, organising, deconstructing, attributing, outlining, finding, structuring,
Analysing integrating, mashing, linking, validating, reverse engineering, cracking, media
clipping.
Applying Implementing, carrying out, using, executing, running, loading, playing, operating,
hacking, uploading, sharing, editing.
Interpreting, summarising, inferring, paraphrasing, classifying, comparing,
Understanding explaining, exemplifying, advanced searches, boolean searches, blog journaling,
twittering, categorising, tagging, commenting, annotating, subscribing.
Recognising, listing, describing, identifying, retrieving, naming, locating, finding,
Remembering bullet pointing, highlighting bookmarking, social networking, social bookmarking,
favouriting/local bookmarking, searching, googling.
LOTS Lower Order Thinking Skills Churches, A. (2009)

17. Solis and Thomas (2009)
http://www.theconversationprism.com

18. Involvement
• Creators
• Conversationalists
• Critics
• Collectors
• Joiners
• Spectators
• Inactives

19. Online CV/Resume/Portfolio
• Website
• Blog
• Video
• Audio
• Photo

20. Jonathan Frost
@Frost_J

22. Promote Expertise
• Groups
• Polls
• Q&As
• Communicate updates
on personal blog or
website
• Raise and answer
questions

23. Developing a
Professional Online Presence
Questions ! to consider
will find
you!

24. Digital Footprint
“Your brand isn’t what you say it is,
it’s what Google says it is”
It has the power to influence people to invest
(or divest) in you.
(Joel 2009)

25. Questions to consider
• Who will look at your online profile?
• What do people want to know about you?
• Where will they use this information?
• Why is your profile important?
• When and how often do you update it?
• How will you use your profile to your
advantage?

26. LinkedIn
• Include current position, past positions and
education
• Add a profile photo
people rarely forget a face  !
• Make connections by inviting people already
in your trusted network e.g. colleagues and
classmates already on LinkedIn and email
contacts

27. Facebook
• Open or Closed
Consider your privacy
settings
• It can be more than just
a ‘social’ network, it can
become part of your
own ‘personal learning
network’

28. Sue Beckingham
s.beckingham@shu.ac.uk
http://twitter.com/suebecks
(@suebecks)
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/suebeckingham
Credit for images on the first slide:
Bruno Maia, IconTexto
http://www,icontexto.com
Creative Commons Licence