LinkedIn to the Job

I started my doctoral program at the ripe age of 22. I was only 2 years out of college. Because of my writing center experience, I was fast-tracked to act as a senior consultant and to teach an English class immediately. Needless to say, I was nervous.

The only picture from teaching ever,
and it's awful, but I loved this class.

I was especially nervous about being respected by my students. They were not that much younger than me, and I knew I would have to earn their trust. I was worried about being labeled a "novice" and being excluded from professional conversations and opportunities.

I also had some skeletons in my closet. Facebook came out my freshman year of college for college students only. I was a freshman learning to use a new technology, and the ramifications of this technology were still years away from really being considered. Not to say that I ever really did anything that bad during my college years, but I didn't want my students or colleagues to see my personal life and judge me. I didn't want them to assume I did drugs because they saw pictures of me at nightclubs and raves (I don't do them and never have, by the way). I didn't want them to assume I was unintelligent-- or worse-- because I enjoy mini-skirts and makeup. I didn't want them to assume I was wealthy because I was on the Equestrian team. I wanted to be able to develop my own persona and for their judgement to be based on my actions in a professional environment.

Luckily, I realized that social networking profiles could be more about who you wanted to be than who you actually were. Even more so, that who you showed you wanted to be on social media attracted like-minded people. I wanted to be a well-educated professional and a competitive scholar.

Case Study # 1 

I went to work. I made sure that when you Googled "Nicole Papaioannou" my history of horseback riding and college parties didn't come up. Instead, you'd find a slew of academic-related profiles and my work (and perhaps a few articles about the other Nicole Papaioannou, over in Cyprus-- she's a ballroom dancer). Go ahead, try it!

I saw how my online presence shaped my offline life. My students read my profiles and saw a professor, rather than a grad student.

Colleagues thought I had something worth saying. They asked to work on research with me. They extended learning opportunities to me.

And years later, a professor in the department read my blog, reached out to me, and eventually became my dissertation chair, despite not ever having a class together.

Then I decided to go to California. Before I made the move, I snagged a well-paying job in a month (pretty unusual for LA, I hear) mostly based on what they read in my LinkedIn profile, as well as looking at my instructional design philosophy via my course website. It was what set me apart at the starting gate.

Social media is important to becoming a professional. I know this beyond a doubt. 

Case Study # 2

My (then) boyfriend and I made the move out West together. He left a full-time job to try to create a better life out here, including finishing college. Without a degree, though, in a city full of actors and part-timers, it was really a challenge for him to find work. Eventually, he turned to me for help.

The first thing I told him was to create a really good LinkedIn profile and a professional portfolio.

It took a little, but he landed his ideal job. He works alongside like-minded individuals at a company committed to continuing education for its staff. It's a place he is proud to work.

The funny thing is... he NEVER APPLIED for the job.

During his first interview, he learned that the hiring manager reached out to him based on what she saw on his LinkedIn profile.

Pointers for Professionalizing Online

Here are some things I learned about developing an online presence along the way:

1. Make as many profiles as you can... keep up with. It's great to have an all-encompassing social media presence, but it doesn't serve you well if information becomes outdated. It makes you look uninterested. 

2. Have great taglines! We all have short attention spans. If you can capture your essence in 40 characters, you have a competitive advantage. 

3. Show don't tell-- build an ePortfolio. Whether it's a formal online portfolio, a website, or links to work that you've done, people want to see what you can do, not just what you say you can do.

4. Engage in the right conversations. Share and discuss issues relevant to that image you want to create. If you like photography, post resources for other photographers, comment on photography blogs, and show your pictures. Engaging in the right conversations might also mean you have to apply self-censorship. For example, fact-checking when you want to post something that seem too crazy to be real is important to maintaining credibility. If you post that Tupac was sighted, you better be ready to provide legitimate resources to back up that claim. Think of all the internet hoaxes that get spread by people who are too lazy to do a quick internet search on"giant squid hoax."

Ultimately, this doesn't have to be about a job. It could be about entering any community that you want to be a part of.

Your social media presence is a self-portrait, a piece of art. It's like the lighting in a painting. It can make an object attractive and beautiful or cast it into the shadows. You are the painter, here.

Choose what you want to highlight and what you want to hide in the dark.

Problematizing Problematizing

The last time I wrote a post was almost 9 months ago. Since then, a lot has happened.

• I moved from the suburbs of NJ to the city of Los Angeles. 
• I left my job as an adjunct and writing center consultant and took a job as an Instructional Designer at a startup EdTech company.
• I developed courses about automobiles, medical compliance, and all things aviation (aircraft systems, aviation regulation, inflight service, etc.). 
• I got promoted from Instructional Designer to Content Manager and now oversee a team of Instructional Designers and Subject Matter Experts. I also interface with executives from the client company.

So what's the biggest thing I've learned during this transition?

There's a problem with problematizing. 

From the time I took my first graduate Writing Studies course until I taught my last writing course, problematizing became a central focus of my life. Authority was demonstrated by the ability to find flaws in others' ideas, to be able to "make an argument." It transitioned from academic analysis to social analysis to picking apart every little facet of my life. To be smart, it seemed, I had to see the loopholes and the weaknesses in every theory, practice, and action, and to be socially just, I had to make sure to bring up the problems I saw in every space. I had to spread awareness.

Things could never be simple, and you could never take them at surface value.

When I became an Instructional Designer at a startup, there wasn't too much to problematize. I was given the content. I turned it into instructional materials, and I moved forward. I wasn't an expert in the content, and I didn't have enough authority to poke holes. I could learn without trying to be an authority on the subject matter. I was also too much of an authority on pedagogy for my colleagues in video production and animation to challenge. It was freeing.

When I was promoted to manager, however, I was given new authority. As I transitioned into the management role, I found myself problematizing everything. I'd essentially complain to the Director of Curriculum Development about everything that "wasn't working" and tell her why it wasn't working. On some level, I thought that showing her I saw that our system was flawed was demonstrating authority, intelligence, showing her I was smart enough to be a good manager. Now, I'm sure it was just irritating. It definitely wasn't good management.

Good management requires making decisions, taking action, and ultimately risking being wrong. These are not skills that are advocated in the current educational climate, where we are pushed to always be right, to make "arguments," and to strike at the weaknesses in other's theories in order to bolster our own, where we are taught that we need to make people more aware of their misconceptions.

Spreading awareness used to be difficult. It used to require action. Now, it's mostly kids whining from behind a keyboard, claiming that you "just need to like or share" to save the world or expressing offense over non-PC language (I've done this myself-- totally guilty).

What I've learned is that outside of academia there is little place for problematizing without action. There is only a need for solutions. Someone who can analyze then think beyond the form of the problem is valuable.

While I know the idea of using knowledge to take action was built somewhere into my education--  mostly in relationships with mentors-- it became buried in the layers of problematizing and reestablishing the hierarchy of experts and novices. It became the reason I left academia. I felt that everyone always needed to leave a mark on an idea and only did so by deconstructing it, by finding what needed to be improved, rarely by an act of support.

To take action is to take a risk, a risk that you might be wrong, a risk that someone else might exercise their "authority" by exposing your action as imperfect or faulty. Theory is, after all, built on ideal circumstance. Action is based in complex reality.

What I've learned from crossing the boundary is that it is much harder, but also much more necessary to become an authority through action rather than argument alone. That is true leadership, and I hope to be a true leader some day.

As of this week, I also traded in the car I drove across the country. It started to "problematize."