Building youself as a BRAND

Branding is not just for brands anymore.

If you take your professional life seriously and want to compete for the top spot in your industry, you need to develop your own personal brand.

Whether you’re looking to begin your career, cement your reputation in your industry or extend your credentials into a new field; building a strong following of like-minded people on social media is paramount.

Social Media Is No Longer Optional

In social media’s early days, the tone was informal, personal and casual.

Now instead of being an optional enterprise, building and grooming your social media presence has become a much more important vehicle for presenting your professional experience to the world, among other facets of your life.

The meaning of the word “social” used to default to socializing “in real life.” Ten years later, the reverse is true.

Social media has now become a barometer for real-world influence.

Brands have long pretended to be people on social media in order to capitalize on this reputation-affirming effect, but an interesting flip has occurred.

While brands are trying to resemble individuals, people are now beginning to behave like brands through sharing a consistent narrative about themselves focused on specific 

In an age where everyone has a public profile, employers are inevitably using this additional information to improve their hiring choices – and who can blame them?

It used to be they had very little detail to go on prior to a phone call or interview, other than what you gave them with your resume and cover letter.

Now things are very different. Whether you like it or not, there is a lot of information out there that can give an employer a pretty good sense of who you are.

Even worse, if there is not a lot about you online they either assume you don’t matter or have something to hide.

A strong resume, a polished skillset, a flourishing network of relationships in your field and hardwork used to be enough to solidify your career.

In today’s marketplace, it’s essential to reflect those same elements online to be considered a top candidate.

Digital Footprints from an HR's Perspective

Life today is being Online and avaliable  virtually. We try to keep up with market trends even with the latest applications, softwares and websites. In such scenario how could we lag behind on our social and professional networking sites.

We try to publicize our personal perspective and opinions on social networking platforms but have we ever thought that what impact would it have on our professional life which is completely forgotten at times when we are out of office. The only time when we are reminded about our professional image is when we are on a professional networking sites. We portray all fancy stuffa and accomplishments assuming that all matters when it come for a fellow colleague to review our work.

Coming from an HR background I assure that there are companies in the industry which support work life balance and dont really care about what you do in your personal life. During the era of more in person interactions (before the boom of internet) apart from your work accomplishments it mattered how you treat you fellow colleagues and your contributions in making the organization  a better place to work for others. In recent times of globalization, you are reviewed same way butbwith an additional impact of your virtual life too. 

While you are on a job hunt; apart from your resume, your LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter accounts also leave an impression on minds of hiring team. Your resume may look all appealing but what if your facebook account shows some negeative comments.

Digital Footprint is what describes you in the virtual world. Your image is at your hand, decide what you would like to show to your future employer. Maintaining a positive footprint on the world wide web helps to build your credibility for a potential job to enhance your career.

Crowdsourcing

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Crowdsourcing is the process of getting work or funding, usually online, from a crowd of people. The word is a combination of the words 'crowd' and 'outsourcing'. The idea is to take work and outsource it to a crowd of workers.

Famous Example: Wikipedia. Instead of Wikipedia creating an encyclopedia on their own, hiring writers and editors, they gave a crowd the ability to create the information on their own. The result? The most comprehensive encyclopedia this world has ever seen.

Crowdsourcing & Quality: The principle of crowdsourcing is that more heads are better than one. By canvassing a large crowd of people for ideas, skills, or participation, the quality of content and idea generation will be superior.

Different Types of Crowdsourcing

Crowdsource Design

Crowdsourcing can also be used to get designs for furniture, fashion, advertisements, video, & product design. Just about anything that can be designed can be crowdsourced.

Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding is mostly used by artists, charities, & start-ups to raise money for projects such as filming a documentary, manufacturing an iPod watch, cancer research, or seed money.

Microtasks

Work is done faster, cheaper, and usually with less errors (when validation systems are in place). Additionally, microtasks can often be performed by people in less fortunate countries, including those with SMS capabilities but without computers.

Pros & Cons

Pros:
Crowdsourcing’s biggest benefit is the ability to receive better quality results, since several people offer their best ideas, skills, & support. Crowdsourcing allows you to select the best result from a sea of ‘best entries,’ as opposed to receiving the best entry from a single provider. Results can be delivered much quicker than traditional methods, since crowdsourcing is a form of freelancing. You can get a finished video within a month, a finished design or idea within a week, and microtasks appear within minutes.

Cons:
Clear instructions are essential in crowdsourcing. You could potentially be searching through thousands of possible ideas, which can be painstaking, or even complicated, if the instructions are not clearly understood. Some forms of crowdsourcing do involve spec work, which some people are against. Quality can be difficult to judge if proper expectations are not clearly stated.

Crowdsourcing is definitely a good approach to get your work done efficiently at a faster pace.


References:
1 -  https://en.wikipedia.org/
2 - https://dailycrowdsource.com/
3 - http://crowdsourcingweek.com/what-is-crowdsourcing/

Learning from an interesting subject - LIFE JOURNEY!

Let me start by saying a warm welcome to all my readers and even myself (since this being my first ever blog) to the virtually social world!

We as humans have a tendency to adapt to the environment and enhance our skills from time to time to compete with the material world. However, it is immensely important to also keep our roots grounded to our religion (spiritual world). Me, as a person of Islam faith have always believed in HUMANITY as a higher religion above all. I think even God (of all religious belief) would also expect the same of his creations.

At the school, Underwood University, there was an interesting subject called "Life Journey" on syllabus from past 4 semesters that I have been studying and always wondered why did I not to opt to study this subject and what learning I have missed out that I could have been exposed to earlier. So here I decide for Fall Semester 2016 to finally opt for this subject taught by our university president Prof. Richard Yoon, JD.

On the very first day of our class (our introduction lecture) I realized that this subject is very much in the same line of thoughts like mine. It is interesting to explore more about how you feel on Human Nature, Happiness, God, Men and Women and many such topics like these....

The motive of this subject is to identify critical important issues facing our world today and to understand the need and perspective of others in the society.

I am glad I made a wise decision to opt this subject now. I may be able to explore little on more these worldly issues and even more to discover my inner self.