Applying for a Job: Building a Professional Online Presence

Technology-based communications are rapidly evolving and have fundamentally changed the way we interact with others in professional as well as personal settings. Many employers have embraced web-based professional networks as their primary source to seek next generation of their employees. Consequently, it is only fitting that we carefully build our professional presence across the web that truly reflects our potential as researchers and collaborators. Below is a sampling of online resources that allow you to build your professional network of collaborators, colleagues, and references, for free.

  • Orcid: ORCID is an open, non-profit, community-driven effort to create and maintain a registry of unique researcher identifiers and a transparent method of linking research activities and outputs to these identifiers. ORCID is unique in its ability to reach across disciplines, research sectors and national boundaries. It is a hub that connects researchers and research through the embedding of ORCID identifiers in key workflows, such as research profile maintenance, manuscript submissions, grant applications, and patent applications.  The ORCID Registry is available free of charge to individuals, who may obtain an ORCID identifier, manage their record of activities, and search for others in the Registry. Organizations may become members to link their records to ORCID identifiers, to update ORCID records, to receive updates from ORCID, and to register their employees and students for ORCID identifiers. 

  • Pivot: Pivot focuses on what matters most to Research Administrators, Research Development Professionals, and their institutions: the ability to identify and connect funding opportunities to researchers at their institution. Pivot combines the most comprehensive, editorially maintained database of funding opportunities worth an estimated $33 billion with our unique database of 3 million pre-populated scholar profiles, drawing from Community of Scholars and Community of Science profiles. Its proprietary algorithm compiles pre-populated researcher profiles unique to your organization (and others) and matches them to current funding opportunities in the expansive COS database. This allows users to search for a funding opportunity and instantly view matching faculty from inside or outside your institution. Conversely, a search for a scholar will link to matching funding opportunities.

  • ResearchGate: ResearchGate is a social networking site for scientists and researchers to share papers, ask and answer questions, and find collaborators.[1] The site has been described as a mashup of “Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn” that includes “profile pages, comments, groups, job listings, and ‘like’ and ‘follow’ buttons”. Members are encouraged to share raw data and failed experiment results as well as successes, in order to avoid repeating their peers’ scientific research mistakes. [From Wikipedia]

  • LinkedIn: Often considered the "Facebook" for professionals, LinkedIn is a streamlined, web-based resource to keep in touch with your professional colleagues, seek references, or build new collaborations.  You can share your thoughts and presentation with your contacts, join research groups that are relevant to your scientific interests, and can post and search of jobs.

  • Mendeley: Mendeley applies a unique approach in helping you find collaborators and research colleague.  Using your publications and keywords therein, Mendeley finds researchers across the web who either have published in the same research area or use similar keywords to define their research interests.

  • My NCBI : My NCBI features include: Save searches & automatic e-mail alerts, display format preferences, filter options, my Bibliography & NIH public access policy compliance, highlighting search terms, recent activity searches & records for 6 months, and LinkOut, document delivery service & outside tool selections.  Watch a video of the overview of MyNCBI here.