Story from: http://www.youtern.com/thesavvyintern/index.php/2011/10/04/5-steps-to-improve-your-online-profile-get-noticed/

5 Steps To Improve Your Online Profile & Get Noticed

While the good old resume is in no danger of disappearing, you’d better have your online profiles in shape.

Something like 80% of all employers check you out online when you apply for a job. Assuming that you’re smart enough to have tailored your Facebook profile during the job hunt, you need tofocus on the things that will get you noticed, examined and hired.

While it used to be true that LinkedIn was THE place to host your professional profile, upstarts like BeKnown (from Monster) are making headway in the social job hunt. You’ll want to test out the new sites by building a profile and watching the results. It’s worth noting that the newer entrants have more reason to work for your success. After all, like you, they are trying to make a name for themselves.

When you post a profile or resume somewhere, you only have one goal: to get noticed by the right recruiter for the right job. Once your resume is on the list, it needs to grab the recruiter’s attention with data points that highlight your success and effectiveness in jobs like the one you want. Your profile needs to scream “Pick me! pick me! pick me! Hey, look over here and pick me.”

Here are five steps to improve your profile to get the attention you want.

• Study the descriptions of jobs you’d like to have. Read the job descriptions and learn the jargon. Print out 20. Prioritize them (from 1 to 20) by the degree of their appeal to you. Go over them line by line with the person who is your job hunt sounding board. Be able to explain why you prefer one over the other.

• Now that you have a very clear picture of which words recruiters are using to define the jobs you want, make a list of the 30 most commonly used words in those job descriptions.This is a critical step. These are the words that recruiters are searching for when you want them to find you.

• With the list in hand, rewrite your profile to make sure that you use each of those keywords at least 3 times in your profile. Be careful to make sure that your language flows gracefully. If it appears that you’ve simply stuffed the profile with key words, you are going to get ignored.

• Look for services that use your profile to match you to jobs. See if your profile matches you to the jobs you want. If it doesn’t, tweak it and watch what happens. The best profiles are tested and retested and you learn about what the market is currently offering.

• Be extremely attentive to your current job title and job description. What matters is how the recruiter will think about it, not how you, your boss or your colleagues think about it. Search LinkedIn for people with the same job title and look to see how they’ve described their job and experience. Many companies, maybe even most, have unique and idiosyncratic names for their jobs. The closer yours is to what they’re looking for, the better off you are.

The profile is here to stay. You have to manage it like it was a new puppy. By paying attention to the grooming and feeding of your online profiles, you can increase the chances of finding the job you want.

Name:  Randi Williams

Internship, Co-op or Research Site: Jawbone (Code 2040)

Location of the Organization (City, State): San Francisco, CA

Major(s)/Minor(s):  Computer Engineering

Expected Graduation Year: 2016

Briefly describe your internship, co-op, research, or service- learning opportunity, including your day-to-day tasks, responsibilities, and assignments.

During the working day I am at Jawbone, a San Francisco based start-up that makes incredible products and software to support it. My place at Jawbone is to support the web tools team in maintaining Jawbone's high quality website. Lately Jawbone has been undergoing a renovation of some of the older pages on the website and my assignments this summer include working with the design team to update these pages. My largest project involves completely redoing the Careers Page on the site.

What have you enjoyed the most about your position or organization/company?

The San Francisco start-up scene is totally different from the way business is done on the East Coast. Besides the obvious cultural differences working in a start-up is just a totally different experience. The company is doing very well but it is still in the growth stage meaning that everyone who works here is a vital part of the mission. Everyone has a job title and maybe a specific set of assignments to complete but there is so much room for interdisciplinary work. All of the teams get to merge and work together and I've found that my skills in a lot more than computer science are being sharpened this summer.

What have you gained from your experience that you could not have gained from another opportunity?

Unique to the Silicon Valley is the spirit of creativity and self-confidence. Everyone here is a dreamer and that is encouraged and highly rewarded. There are a lot of daily problems that people have and that they want to solve. Everyone is working to get their ideas and solutions out there by taking the initiative to drop everything and build it. I will go home with a piece of that energy in me, the entrepreneurial spirit that I can build things to make the world better. 

What advice would you give to another student who is seeking an internship or similar experience?

Come to Silicon Valley! There is so much here for students in every discipline and there is a lot of fun to be had and a lot to learn. I feel pumped up and motivated now to go back to school and be really successful.

How do you see your experience as meaningful? This might involve skills you’ve gained, information you’ve learned, mentors you’ve connected with, or projects you’ve completed.

The most meaningful experience I am getting out of this summer is the amazing opportunity to be a CODE2040 Fellow. This program is all about getting more minorities, Latinos and Blacks in particular, involved in Silicon Valley. As a Fellow I have had the opportunity to talk to all kinds of leaders across the start-up world and ask them advice about how to get my career started when I am finished with school. These people are really busy running things like Facebook, Dropbox, Andreessen Horowitz, Twitter, and Square but they think that what CODE2040 is doing is important enough to have these deep, meaningful conversations about how even as a student I can think about things like how to build the next big app or website that is going to change the world.

Please provide a short quote about what you liked most about your position / earning internship credit / the internship placement process / the Shriver Center:

Having the opportunity to intern this summer has set me on a trajectory to the stars.

The Operating Units of Textron Systems currently have 2014 Internship positions posted on the Textron college recruiting site (collegejobs.textron.com).  These internship roles cover different disciplines such as: Engineering, Finance, Integrated Supply Chain, Information Technology, and general Business roles.  Please make sure you are reviewing these opportunities and applying for those roles in which you are interested and qualified.  The Operating Units of Textron Systems focus on providing both products and services that support our military and

are have locations throughout the United States including the following sites:

Wilmington, MA (Textron Defense Systems)

Baltimore, MD (AAI Corporation)

Charleston, SC  (AAI Corporation)

Huntsville, AL  (AAI Corporation)

Slidell, LA  (Textron Marine & Land)

Austin, TX  (AAI and Overwatch)

Williamsport, PA  (Lycoming)

We have internships at various locations supporting a wide range of functions within our business to include: 

•Business Development 

•Contracts 

•Engineering - Aerospace, Electrical, Test, Software, Systems, and Mechanical 

•Environment, Safety & Health 

•Finance 

•General Business 

•Human Resources 

•Information Assurance/Cyber Security 

•IT 

•Legal 

•Marketing & Communications 

•Network Engineering 

•Procurement 

•Production Planning 

•Project Administration 

•Quality Assurance 

•Research & Development Engineering 

•Security 

•Supply Chain Management 

•Technical Writing 

•Welding Engineering 

Submit your resume in UMBCworks and apply online at http://www.textron.com/careers/undergrads-graduates/index.php today!

Please note students must have a 3.2 and be a US Citizen/National to be considered.

On-Campus Interviews offer students a chance to conveniently interview for professional positions on campus.  Employers travel to our campus for the specific purpose of interviewing preselected students for currently open positions.  This is a great opportunity to interview with employers specifically interested in UMBC students and offers the advantage of a smaller applicant pool.  Interviews take place during the fall and spring. The logistics (viewing positions, applying, signing up for interview time slots, etc.) are all handled via UMBCworks.

Don't miss out on employers coming to UMBC to recruit YOU this fall! The following is a list of employers coming to conduct on-campus interviews with application deadlines within the next month.

Deloitte
Position: Federal Security & Privacy Consultant - 9259839
Resume Submission End:  October 14, 2013

AOL/Advertising.com
Position:  Associate Tech Support Engineer
Resume Submission End:  October 16, 2013

U. S. Census Bureau
Position:  IT Specialist
Resume Submission End:  October 17, 2013

Mueller Associates, Inc.
Position:  Mechanical Engineer
Resume Submission End:  October 22, 2013

Morgan Stanley
Position:  Operations Analyst Program
Resume Submission End:  October 23, 2013

Worthington Financial Partners
Position:  Sales Associate & Management Trainee
Resume Submission End:  October 24, 2013

A full list of On-Campus Interviews scheduled is available on our website calendar and on UMBCworks, please check regularly for any updates or changes that may occur.

Name:  Michael Moubarek 

Internship, Co-op or Research Site: UMBC Department of Biological Sciences

Location of the Organization (City, State): Baltimore, MD

Major(s)/Minor(s):  Biochemistry & Molecular Biology

Expected Graduation Date (Month & Year): 2015

Briefly describe your internship, co-op, research, or service- learning opportunity, including your day-to-day tasks, responsibilities, and assignments.

I have had the privilege of researching in the lab of Charles Bieberich, PhD. since January 2011.  It was my first research position but since then I've been thrust into the midst of multiple challenging research projects. My daily responsibilities include genotyping and maintaining mouse colonies. I also regularly perform dissections of mice to help characterize the progression of prostate cancer in transgenic mouse models. To date I have been involved in a drug trial and collaborative projects with other universities in the Baltimore area.

What have you enjoyed the most about your position or organization/company?

I have most enjoyed working with the people in our lab. We have many different people from around the world who have a bevvy of interests and talents. Everyone brings an immense amount of specialized knowledge and elements of uniqueness to the lab and I often find myself deep in conversation or doubled over in stitches with laughter. It has been so easy to work past the accents and different cultures to pursue scientific discovery together. I wouldn't have it any other way and I truly believe that the dynamic in our lab would allow us to tackle any problem successfully in our field of focus.

What have you gained from your experience that you could not have gained from another opportunity?

Dr. Bieberich believes in challenging undergraduates with graduate level research opportunities and often tasks undergraduate students with their own project and a fair amount of autonomy.  This can be intimidating especially when you want results but I thoroughly enjoy the challenge and it keeps me busy and ever-learning.

What advice would you give to another student who is seeking an internship or similar experience?

Take the time to talk to upperclassmen who have conducted research in your field about what they learned and how they sought out their internship. Find labs that focus on something that you find interesting, make a short list, and take the time to read the papers published by the lab. When you contact the principal investigator be respectful yet persistent. Many investigators are extremely busy and receive many requests to join their labs so find a way to make yourself positively stand out. If you receive an offer and end up working in a lab pay close attention to the details, be inquisitive, and always go above and beyond.

How do you see your experience as meaningful? This might involve skills you’ve gained, information you’ve learned, mentors you’ve connected with, or projects you’ve completed.

My experience has instilled within me a confidence that with the right team, a little ingenuity, and enough hard work nothing is impossible. I have gone from not knowing how to conduct basic research and being clueless in a wet lab setting to training other undergraduate students excelling in lab work in little over a year. The valuable foundation of lab and animal care skills that I have developed will allow me to chase my dreams without worrying too much about a lot of the details of the work. The incredible mentoring from Dr. Bieberich has been a real blessing and I cannot thank him enough for investing in me.

Please provide a short quote about what you liked most about your position / earning internship credit / the internship placement process / the Shriver Center:

Take advantage of all the opportunities open to you at this point and your life. Pick something and run with it until you fail then pick something else and repeat.