LinkedIn Research Process
Before this course, I was very unfamiliar with LinkedIn and how it functions—I had only briefly heard of it through friends and peers who have started to look for jobs in their desired fields. With that being said, researching best practices for professional networking on LinkedIn proved a useful and informative assignment. I don’t oftentimes conduct self-led learning, so this part of Unit 2 was a good way for me to begin to do so. Not only did I enjoy researching LinkedIn in detail about something I had only swiftly heard about a handful of times, but I found it to be an effective way of learning how to make note of what is worth noting, and what could be left out. It was interesting to see the differences between what each of us included in our research memorandum such as what my peers had included in the research that I had either not considered or not come across.
I have always been hesitant on posting about myself on a social media platform which is a reason that plays into why I have not been motivated to make a LinkedIn profile. However, researching and learning about the practices and benefits of “putting yourself out there” in a professional sense has made me realize that it is a vital step in networking and connecting with other like-minded people—similar to how we had to form our writing teams at the start of the term. I am excited to develop a profile and highlight skillsets and experience in ways that will help me work towards my professional goals.
Formal Report: Proposal and Outline Processes
For the Formal Report, I chose a topic that I am currently deeply involved with—combating employee burnout and staffing shortage at a local café, C Market Coffee. The planning and research process became a crucial step for me to understand what is expected and required for this assignment; writing the proposal and the outline allowed me to address the steps I need to bring all the elements of my research together while making sure I keep my research narrow and focused. It has also been interesting learning how to place a high value on the intended audience and always write with the reader in mind. Lastly, I am grateful for having created a writing schedule and research plan going forward as major changes cannot be made suddenly.
Peer Review Process
This was an insightful step for Unit 2 and it motivated me to reconsider elements of the formal report proposal that will benefit my final draft. For this unit, I was assigned to peer review Ethan Fung’s proposal in which I mainly focused on providing feedback as clear, direct, and constructive as possible. However, after I received the instructor’s feedback on my peer review, I realized that my attempts at being clear had resulted in a lack of detail. For example, I would describe the reviewed document as “easy to read” and “the main problem” is clear—which are extremely vague and unserviceable ways of describing someone’s work. I learned that details are central to writing a peer review as you want to present your feedback in the most beneficial of ways possible while demonstrating that you genuinely read and understood your peer’s document. I also learned that there is always room for improvement—my peer’s proposal was highly well-organized and expressed; and at first, I had a hard time finding any significant mistakes. Admittingly, I had to read it multiple times in order to gain enough points to write a full review; I hope that my feedback was as useful to my peer as the one I received was to me.