Skip to main content

One Picture is Worth… (see www.SueMentors.blogspot.com)

Do you have a photo posted in your online profiles and web spaces?

 

I have been surprised to notice in the past few months how many of my colleagues and friends do NOT have a photo posted. In many cases, they are new to the website (e.g., just joined LinkedIn). It has made me wonder why.

 

I remember the early days of life online. I didn’t post my photo for several years but I finally got over my nervousness in 1999. (Those were also the years where the most common place to post a photo was in online dating sites.)

 

Nowadays, there is much more openness and comfort with our lives being lived online as well as in person. Many of you readers are online in multiple spaces – both professionally and personally.

 

I recommend that you post a photo in your various web spaces – and also that you use the same photo in all your professional sites. (I just changed my photo and made sure that LinkedIn, my SueMentors blog, and my SueMentors twitter profile all use the same photo.) Why?

 

Think about the power of an image. If a potential employer searches to see what you have done online, the employer will now see an image associated with your name and skills. (Often, LinkedIn is the first – or among the first – in the search results.) And if the employer keeps searching for results about you, the same image is seen over and over. Now do you get the picture?

 

A final thought about your picture to be posted. Make sure it is good quality and focuses mostly on your face. It is amazing how many photos posted in online professional sites are blurry, taken at too long a range (e.g., showing someone standing), or include children or pets along with the person. If you can’t afford to pay a professional to take a quality headshot for you, ask a camera-savvy friend to help you with a photo shoot and then work together to choose the best image. And remember to crop, fix the redeye, and otherwise make it the best photo you can.

Posted via email from sue griffey's posterous

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mentor: Barbara Rawlins, Monitoring and Evaluation Team Leader, Maternal and Child Survival Program

Another feature of this blog is bringing you advice and perspectives from people who mentor, by answering 3 questions. Here are  Barbara Rawlins ’  responses: What are mentees looking for? ·  Career guidance ·  Technical advice ·  Moral support ·  Advice on how to negotiate politically-sensitive or controversial situation What 1 piece of advice do you give every mentee you work with? Figure out what they want to do (in the long term) and what steps they can take to get there Why are you interested in mentoring? To support younger colleagues, especially women, to help attain their career goals
20 comments
Read more

A mentor is like a mirror: Even a senior (expert) needs - and wants - mentoring #mentor (SueMentors.Blogspot.com)

I haven’t been posting for the past 3 months because of an extremely busy time. But I have been mentoring – and in ways that were surprising to me. In July-September, we at Social & Scientific Systems (SSS) were unexpectedly were facing the sooner-than-expected project close-out, and it meant that several staff needed to be looking for new jobs. I wasn’t surprised that some of the staff – mostly those still early in their careers – were asking for my help in updating their resumes. I was more surprised to have two very senior and experienced professionals ask for my help. When they gave me their resumes to review before we met, I realized that both were examples of why a mentor can be useful, no matter how far along you are in your career. One had an illustrious and varied career and many qualifications prior to coming to SSS two years ago. But her resume read like someone who had just finished graduate school. She was very detailed in listing all the things she did (both in her SS
2 comments
Read more

A Decade of SueMentors Mentoring!

The just-finishing 2019 marks a decade of my “formal” SueMentors mentoring. As I reflected on the decade over the last months of 2019, I realized I have learned so much – but haven’t always let mentees and other supporters know that. So I went back to my program-evaluation career and put together an infographic to summarize the 10 years. This shows you what I’ve learned from mentees, the ways mentees have shaped  my delivery of short- and longer-term mentoring, and how I’ve been able to expand from 1-to-1 mentoring to more 1-to-many methods that meet people where they are. Many thanks to the decade of mentees I’ve worked with directly: Mentees who connected through a mentoring program or a “self-referral” or a referral to me from someone else S everal of you who “discovered” me from an online source S ome who I’ve met in person at conferences or by happenstance (like waiting for ride-shares) T hose who have re-contacted me And a special thanks to Kristina Davis,
4 comments
Read more