Greetings All,
I wanted to let you know that I’ve been experimenting today, by listing professional jobs here and also on the “SMA at the UW” group on LinkedIn. In terms of ease of posting, it looks like the LinkedIn “group” section is going to be the easiest, and it looks as though any group member can post jobs to it. (Haven’t been able to experiment, but please feel free to join and try listing a job.) I want to make it as easy a possible for you to get to the job listings, whether you’re looking or just interested in what’s out there.
Now, the reason for this – as you may already know, the Career Coordinator position is being eliminated, along with many other university positions, in order to save the “academic core” of the university. When the budget recovers, some of those positions may be restored, but it does underline the fact that we all are on our own when it comes to our careers. We must be responsible for that on our own.
My plan is to help you all replace the Alumni Directory - with LinkedIn, FaceBook and maybe even Twitter! It seems almost radical to many academics, but I’m certainly seeing more academics and scientists in LinkedIn, the more professionally inclined of those three “social networking” sites. And, if you all actually use it, it can be even more effective than the SMA Directory for finding each other and staying in touch with each other.
It has a ton of useful features that you control in terms of your own level of privacy, but you can list your own profile and control how much email and updates you get, and there are ways you can get in contact with people beyond your own primary network.
Please do think about going to LinkedIn.com and setting up your profile. Invite the people you know (including me!), and join the SMA at the UW group.
I’ll be writing more about LinkedIn and other networking in the time I have left here at SMA (August 7), but much of that will be on my own website and other online resources. Here are two links where you can find that information.
http://Job-Hunt.org Look in the left column, near the bottom, for my articles.
http://careerchangeforacademics.com The whole site is mine, and various sections are unfinished, but I’ll soon have more time to add to them. And, if you have questions for me, ask, and I’ll be happy to answer them by writing a blog post, just for you!
