Resumes and cover letters remain in style, even in the era of social media, which is why you’ll be producing both as part of your Professional Portfolio.
MSU’s own Career Services office provides a resume guide, and you have access to a host of resume templates in Microsoft Word (which come as part of your MSU Microsoft 365 account). Students enrolled in classes with Adobe Creative Cloud can use stock templates in the Adobe suite, and even those not enrolled should be able to work with it in one of the computer labs on campus–just contact our College’s IT liaison, Tony Glover.
There is plenty of good resume and cover letter advice available online (c.f. this Zety page, which shows you how to tailor standard forms to meet a wide variety of employment opportunities), but there are also dedicated professionals on campus who were explicitly hired to help you. Our Career Counselors offer mock interviews as well as individualized help with resumes and cover letters–so set up an appointment before your Professional Portfolio is due!
Getting the STAR treatment
As for the interview, most Career Services recommend the STAR method. Included here is a *short* video on STAR. Contact our Career Counselors for more information and mock interview opportunities!
Do you want to build a LinkedIn Profile?
If you’re anything like me, the answer is a hard “no.” That said, I have the luxury withdrawing into my room of privilege because I am already steadily employed in a non-industry-based occupation. Most professionals now are somewhat obliged to participate in the social media designed for hiring and professional networking, LinkedIn. This is why a LinkedIn profile is part of your Professional Portfolio. (For MSU-related LinkedIn examples, with a strong English emphasis, click here.)
You’ll find no end of online advice for optimizing the platform. There are tips for beginners, 20 steps to a better profile, tricks for how to “get results” on the site, optimizations for visibility, and even blog posts and videos from self-designed “social media colleges.”
(Superficial confession: I find the dominance of LinkedIn depressing because the interface is so bleak and boring, but maybe that’s because I spend so much time looking at BlackBoard, and there’s really only so much Brutalist tech design I can take.)
Other Social Media
Does this mean you can’t use other social media platforms to advance your career? Of course not! You will just have to determine what you wish to do and use the platform that best aligns with your goals (because, just as in literature, form follows function):
- Many journalists and publishers have relied on Twitter and now Bluesky
- Instagram meets the needs of writers who draw on the visual arts
- Vimeo, Dailymotion, and YouTube suit those involved with video production (there are lovely video essays on all and a number of vlogs on YouTube)
- Podcasting is well suited to both storytelling and investigative journalism
- Some teachers have had great success with Instagram, TikTok, and even Snapchat, but–be warned–the deployment of social media platforms for pedagogical ends often veers into “creepy treehouse” territory
Good advice for creating a professional bio for any social media platform can be found here, at the Buffer Marketing Library.
That said, there is one “web” or “social” presence that is always fitting for professions allied with the field of English Studies: good old-fashioned blogging. Many professional journals and publications have online blogs that accompany their regular offerings, and a number of teachers, writers, editors, lawyers, and the like have their own blogs, which they host on personal websites (like this one–and I’ve added “Mayhap Musing” to show what a blog from me would look like, but I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to keep a blog up).
A website can personalize professional branding while offering persons with English degrees the opportunity to “publish” the writing that matters most to them (lesson plans, reviews, poetry, personal narrative, etc.).
Our very own Dr. Deanna Mascle, the Director of the Morehead Writing Project, has a “Metawriting” site with a host of great materials on writing instruction. Her web presence was created with the popular WordPress software, which is the platform I used to create this site.
If you’re curious about what’s involved in website creation, and would like some guidance before you start playing around with free (or free adjacent) software, check out this video:
Admission: I *did not* watch a video before I started. Probably should have, but what’s done is done.
Helga's Hub 