Case Story: Web presence as part of CV

Summary	Web presence as part of CV
Group / workshop	Digital Identities	Status	seed
Project details...

Situation

What was the setting in which this case study occurred?

In his keynote at the Future of Web Apps expo in London recently, Tim Bray of Sun Microsystems, speaking to Web developers and designers about the impact of the recession said words to the effect of, "why would I employ anyone who didn't have a existing Web presence?". He was primarily referring to the need for developers to contribute to open source software projects as a way of providing evidence of their competence and their willingness to make a contribution.

http://events.carsonified.com/fowa/2008/london/videos/tim-bray/

Task

What was the problem to be solved, or the intended effect?

The problem is that in a job marketplace in which there are more job seekers than jobs, people's online presence (their digital identity) may play a significant role in their ability to find work.

The problem is more than simply building a superficial web presence but associating that presence to concrete evidence of practice and experience in a particular area. The evidence might take the form of submitted code, of available applications or Web services, or of contributions to blogs, twitter or online discussion fora.

Actions

What was done to fulfil the task?

The expected actions of prospective employees is that they build a convincing online presence that demonstrates their ability to make a contribution to an ongoing task or activity. In the context of web developers and designers, this might be evidenced thru their contribution to open source code, or thru an eportfolio of previous design work. In other areas, the kind of evidence might be different.

Being able to associate that evidence to their CV, via an email address or URL for example, is clearly important.

Results

What happened? Was is a success? What contributed to the outcomes?

Lessons Learned

What did you learn from the experience?

Licensing

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.