After talking about web designs and doing the readings, I thought to myself “why does linkedIn limit what I can do with the layout of the design?”. You can’t change the font or really what your profile looks like. Its rigid. Boring. No fun. Is being professional always so boring? It just seems that you have to present yourself in the professional world as just that: a professional. It seems that we all forget that everyone is somebody else. Its so easy to lay out your credentials, but what happens when we want to get to know whats underneath. It’s just something I have been thinking about…
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Observe, Create, Intervene 
I totally agree! Having recently discovered more creative resume designs, I get a sinking feeling when I click on Word and open up my incredible boring, albeit totally professional, resume. It’s black and white, has tiny print in order to stay under the one page limit, and says absolutely nothing about who I am as a person. I can’t wait to play around with some more creative designs for my resume now that I’ve seen the light…and the colors!
I’m sure why “professional” means boring, but I have to agree that I tend to zap all creativity out of my work when I have been instructed to be professional. My writing loses its pretty prose, I stop taking any interesting risks, and my ideas become insignificant and passionless. Professional should not mean passionless. My new goal is to try and try and find a balance between professional and personal. I don’t think the two have to be totally separate.
Are you interested in trying to spice up your resume or portfolio in a personal or creative way? Do you have any ideas on how to bridge the gap between being professional and not being boring?
I just created a LinkedIn myself and couldn’t agree more how simple the layout is. However, I do like how the layout stays true to the simplicity and doesn’t allow people to go crazy with it. People in the business world want to know information in a resume format. They don’t want crazy designs and have to dig deep to find the simple information. I think LinkedIn has a reason why they don’t allot people to change the format very much.
Yea I totally agree. The way linkedIn is set up is to have professionals and colleagues focus on the content and essence of a person’s experiences and accomplishments. This is a good thing but also a bad thing because it removes a lot of personality. However, this also allows people to direct there attention on content rather than presentation.
“Boring” is certainly subject to opinion. I think the simple layout allows professionals to glean the right information from a LinkedIn page as fast as possible. Keep in mind that if a recruiter only looks at a resume for 6 seconds, a LinkedIn page might only be glanced at. The simple layout (and what you find boring) streamlines the page and allows it to be conducive of information. LinkedIn pages can be customized to some extent (changing your photo, etc) but remember you can always link out to a personal website, which might be more artistic and open to creativity.
Yes that is true. I do feel now that if someone fews my profile, it will most likely be for a short period of time. So they will just want to get the information and move on.
I can relate to this topic because I feel like I am boring my audience in my new professional work space because it has less personality than my first blog. It’s hard to stay professional while showing the audience who you are. I see this in a similar was with the CV we watched about from the business man. His profession clearly called for that type of video (if he chose to make one), but we hardly got a self of him compared to the other videos. My question remains: How do you stay professional while intriguing your audience and letting them know you?
What I learned from Assignment 2 is that we have to be a little boring sometimes. However, there are so many ways to create our personal and professional presence on the internet. I think a good way to start is to ask ourselves, what do we hope to accomplish with this profile/website? And then we can go from there. I decided to incorporate a website and linkedIn in my profile because I thought I could be a bit more personal and detailed on my website, and more professional and content focused on my linkedin profile.
I think this is a great discussion. I’ve been thinking about this in a more general sense as well. Like in mind of the way you dress or present yourself in physical ways. Like does an ear piercing or tattoo make you unprofessional? Do we all have to wear the same black suit to be seen as professional? This idea is something I struggle with balancing your expression and your professionalism at the same time.
Yea this is really interesting. I believe that it is human nature to simply judge others by appearance. It isn’t like we want to do it, I just think that it happens subconsciously. I don’t like it and I try to fight it, but sometimes we just cannot help judging by the cover. I think this will be a problem for a while but there is the potential for others to reach out and try and change the way we judge others by appearance.
I agree that the LinkedIn layout can be boring, however I think their focus is to have people present themselves professionally more than creatively. I think part of LinkedIn’s objective is to ask professionals to create a profile that is simple and something beyond weather updates or tagged photos. However, for those who are interested in professions that involve some creative aspects such as the use of Adobe software, allowing a customized layout might be nice to have!