By Shell C The idea of trying to keep our work and home lives separate is not new, albeit it may have become more difficult in these post-plague times. When we think about our online identities, I think many of us do still try. “By keeping up profiles on both platforms, users can deploy Facebook and LinkedIn to present their ‘social’ and ‘professional’ selves respectively.” (van Dijck 2013, p. 211). That works to an extent, although LinkedIn seems to be containing more and more personal information every day. My biggest problem is, I have multiple professional identities. The two main ones are that I work as a psychologist and also as a business analyst.
It’s not that I’m trying to hide one identity from potential employers of the other, as van Dijck (2013) suggests (and is a thought that apparently horrifies Mark Zuckerberg). Quite frankly, I don’t think someone who is considering me for a role that requires me to map the processes for onboarding a new business onto their online platform really cares about my skill level with people who have a history of trauma. For the resumes I send out to potential employers, I choose which one I send. They will mention the other roles (otherwise my career history looks really patchy) but I choose where I put the detail. Unfortunately, LinkedIn, and the job search platforms such as Seek (which are also embracing that profile structure), don’t allow me to do that. It’s frustrating that we can’t curate our online identities the way we want to, in the interests of employers and employees alike.
van Dijck, J. (2013). ‘You have one identity’: Performing the self on Facebook and LinkedIn. Media, Culture and Society 35(2): 199-215. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443712468605