A work in progress

Having executed Thing one and Thing two........sounds like a Tarantino remake of The Cat in the Hat it was time to move onto Thing 4 of my Rudai journey, my professional brand. I followed the steps and Googled myself incognito. Google decided to include results that had Susanne spelled with a ‘z’ and even with these extra results lo and behold there at the top of the list was little old me, with a LinkedIn profile that I have no recollection of ever creating.........Friday the 24^th of May 2013 had obviously been a slow day because there it was for all to see. How had I not been headhunted in the last 2 years you might ask? It may have something to do with the fact that all I had included on my profile was my name and place of work, what could have happened to cause me to abandon my profile? The only thing I can think of is the realization that I should have been busy in the kitchen that day baking a cake for my son’s 15th birthday which was the following day or at least going to Tesco to buy one. 


So I was one step ahead and already had a LinkedIn profile albeit a poor one. Next came the dreaded photo, Rudai asked to upload a photo of yourself that you ‘like’ well that photo is never going to exist.....I dread cameras and try to avoid them whenever possible so I used my work ID photo instead, it’s not that old but there are definitely more ‘laughter lines’ and grey hairs on the current me. 

My name is consistent, it’s always Susanne with an S not a Z, in person I answer to Susie and Sue just don’t call me Susan please. My professional headline states that I am a library assistant and I also listed the roles that I am passionate about. Confusion set in when trying to decide what should go into the summary box and the experience box, I didn’t want to overlap and be repetitive and to be honest I’m still not sure if it’s right. Maybe it’s an Irish thing but I like to keep my light firmly under a bushel so listing the achievements that I’m proud of and projects that have been successful wasn’t a comfortable experience and is something that I will have to work on. The skills, language and education sections were straightforward. As requested I connected with the suggested groups and introduced myself to the other members of the Rudai23 group. 

As well as being a platform to showcase a CV I think LinkedIn is actually a really useful tool to keep track of all the training, projects and new roles that we as librarians undertake and may otherwise be forget to include when updating an actual CV.........I won’t wait another 2 years to update mine.