Cultivating Your Online Identity: How important is a professional presence in social media?

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Times are tough. Good jobs are scarce and competition is high. You’ve polished your resume. Spent countless hours reviewing company backgrounds and you’ve assured yourself that you are ready for whatever questions that sneaky HR manager throws at you.    You land the interview, nail it and spend the next week and a half waiting for a phone call that never comes in.  What happened?!  Maybe you were the perfect candidate until that same sneaky HR manager who didn’t manage to stump you with a question did happen to stumble across that photo of you funnelling beer at your best friends stag…or was it that shirtless YouTube video you posted singing about your frustration with patrons of your previous job at Starbucks? (see video below).

Think that pesky HR manager is too busy to bother seeking you out? Think again.  In a 2013 study conducted by CareerBuilder.com  2,303 hiring managers and human resource professionals  were questioned regarding the use of social media as part of their hiring process. The study revealed that  37% of employers used social media networks to screen potential job candidates.  That means roughly two out of every five hiring directors took the time to browse your online profiles and check you out online. (Forbes. 2013)

When your next potential employer Google’s your name, what will they find? The slightest perceived infraction may be the difference between landing your dream job and  losing it to the guy with the squeaky clean Facebook page or the girl who couldn’t be found online at all. Candidates for competitive positions should maintain online identities that project professionalism, demonstrate effective communication skills and show association with professional networks and colleagues. As a general rule of thumb if your grandma would be offended by it, keep it offline.

 

Notes from my first mentor meeting

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Thesis Mentor Schedule: Weekly meetings on Friday

Does text based language exchange through social media improve conversational English skills?

Elaborate and expand:

How much did vocabulary improve as a result of these exchanges?
At which points did language the improve the most? If any?
How did my language change when communicating? Did I have to adjust my writing at any point? Why ? Why not?

Evaluate vocabulary improvement: Using correlation tests, T-tests, descriptive statistics.

Further Reading: Search for PHD and Master thesis projects related to pen pals, vocabulary acquisition, Japanese ESL students.

Introduction
Backdrop for proposal, why do we have pen pals?

Explore pen pals as a traditional way to improve understanding of culture and language skills.

How do we compare the traditional pen pal relationship to the modern digital pen pal relationships with the support of social media?

Does having a pen pal improve learning in a traditional way? Reference the advantage of improving language skills. Pen pal in social media era’s.

Possible problems: Lack of longitude studies, lack of imperial studies to highlight the advantage of pen pals in modern times

Lit Review

PEN PAL Relationships to improve language skills pre web 2.0 era.

Pen pal relationships to improve language skills in the social media era.

Pen pal practices to improve vocabulary acquisition

Methodology

Search literature on action research. Researcher as well as a participant.

Data collection: 4 years of data collection.

Data analysis

talk about Tom Cobb. Language analyser: http://www.lextutor.ca/vp/eng/

Particpants

Context of the relationship, frequency of communication, type of relationship.

 

 

The lack of emotion in text based language exchange: Are we creating a whole new set of problems?

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Communication is not just about words. With the advance of mobile devices, social media and the proliferation of text based language exchange are we losing the personal touch necessary to convey emotions and in-turn develop emotional attachment? I recently read an article that stated that 99% of North Americans now own a cellphone and that 81% use their phone to exchange text messages and send email. In a non-related but similar study data consumption amongst cell phone users increased in 2012 by 63% while voice calling declined by 13%. This decline in voice-to-voice communication shouldn’t come as a surprise, especially in Canada. Canadians pay some of the highest mobile phone service rates in the developed world. Text based language exchange provides a cost effective and popular alternative to expensive voice calling. Most companies now offer affordable nationwide texting packages while continuing to charge exorbitant rates for long distance calls. Texting helps to cut down on those big cell phone bills and our smart phones give us ubiquitous access to our emails and social networks while we’re on-the-go. However, despite being cost effective and convenient is this new trend in communication costing us emotionally?

It is virtually impossible to convey emotion through text based language exchange. Although we have developed emoti-cons and symbols to convey emotion along with our texts can they ever truly replace a hug, or the sound of another voice for that matter? How often have you wondered if your friend actually “lol’d”? Are we really rolling-on-the-floor-laughing? Acronyms and internet lingo have been developed as a band-aid solution to the lack of emotional context in text based language exchange.

Parenting expert and paediatric nurse Denise Daniels describes email and text based language exchange as “lacking the emotional qualities of face-to-face interaction”. Essentially, it is impossible to provide a text based substitute for emotion. Critical communication factors such as voice inflections, sarcasm and body language are all lost when we substitute text based language exchange for face to face interaction. I for one am taking a personal stance against solely using text based language exchange. I have been making more of an effort to reach out to my friends using voice calls, I’m attempting to make more face time for friends while limiting my use of social networks. Especially on my mobile devices. I hope that others will follow this trend or at least begin to steer away from the pitfalls of relying only on using text based communication.

 

Russian Hip Hop 2012

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russianhiphop

New Slavic Hip Hop Single creating buzz in Russia.

A steady interest in hip hop music has been growing in Russia since the fall of the iron curtain. Released in 1994  Naletchiki Bad B was a controversial but commercially successful Russian Hip Hop album. Artists today are perfecting their craft as the demand for Hip Hop music in Russia rises

 

The Soccket: Turning Soccer Balls Into Power Sources

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soccerballbatteries

THE SOCCKET: Turning Soccer Balls Into Power Sources and providing 3rd world children with a toy by day and light at night.

A group of undergrad engineering students at Harvard have developed an ingenius device that addresses the pitfalls of poverty in 3rd world countries.

Meet the Soccket. A soccer ball that contains an inductive coil mechanism similar to the ones found in shake and charge flashlights. The coil, stored inside a soccer ball, contains a small magnet that when rolled through the coil builds an electric charge.

The Soccket allows the user to connect an LED light to this power source which, after only 15 minutes of game play, will provide up to 3 hours of light.

The concept for utilizing a soccer ball as an energy source was developed after several harvard students visited Africa. They noted children would play soccer all day long. Often substituting cans and other scraps of garbage for the ball. These children also lived in homes without power sources or any form of light after night fall.

The soccket provides both a ball and a light source for children who otherwise would go without either. With continual improvements to the static mechanism its producers hope to achieve longer running times after minimal game play.

 

 

Missing Tourist Found Among Search Party For Herself.

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icelandtour

Panic was incited on an Icelandic tour of the volcanic canyon of Eldgjá when a member of an organized tour was reported missing.

According to the Iceland Review, a bus driver reported that one of her tour members was absent on Saturday when she failed to return to the bus.

The driver waited an hour before contacting police along with local search and rescue teams. Tour members were also quick to join the search and rescue efforts.

The reports say the search was called off early Sunday morning when the group discovered that the woman believed to be missing had been on the bus all along. In fact she had been one of the leaders of the search group.

The driver along with the other passengers had not recognized the woman because she had changed her clothes and cleaned up after the stop in Eldgjá before reentering the bus.

When questioned on the incident local police chief Sveinn Runarsson stated “The tourist apparently did not recognize the description of herself during the ill-fated search and had no idea that she was missing,”

The Icelandic tourism company who organized the event say that they have added this revision to their tour policies. “Smelly and soiled clothing must not be changed at any time during the tour….ever.”