Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
and shaking hands constituted the job seeking and job securing processes. The
proximity of jobs was limited to the local town borders. Then, industrialism
changed all that. Too many people, too many companies, how will they
connect? The answer was mass media and the power of communication
technology in the forms of radio, television, and print, and, the development of
mass transportation with the steam engine. With media and technology, there
always is a market that results due to involvement of a public also known as an
audience. Mass media helped to create the “job market” and the way people
connected with jobs and companies changed. In the industrial age, jobs were
posted in mass media and applicants needed to visit, but only to fill out an
application. Securing employment using the application stayed, but only in
lower level scenarios or in bureaucratic situations which control needed to be
enforced. The application does not lend itself to creative thinking or narrative.
It lists items using chronological order, true, but the application merely uses this
as order, not necessarily as narrative. The resume emerged as the instrument
of the professional job seeker as technology gained momentum and modernism
came through for the job seeker with the typewriter and the ability to type a
resume and have it copied or printed at a print shop. The resume allowed
expansion of the personal narrative to more than the application. The resume
explained someone's history in print. The resume is a mini-narrative, but is still
lacking unique personal expression. Along comes the electronic era and new
media is born. The Internet becomes the newest media of choice for the new
age worker, also known as the knowledge worker. The Web portfolio trumps
the resume. The Web portfolio will ultimately evolve into a staple instrument for
work for hire communication transactions in the knowledge age.
The Web portfolio evolution is emerging now and will continue to be fostered
by third party conduits that connect people with other people to transact work
for hire. These third parties are in the form of employment agencies and online
job search databases such as Monster.com. The Web portfolio is expanded by
creative talent agencies such as Aquent.com, who carry the Web portfolios of
their work for hire artists, designers, and copywriters. Another site that posts
Web portfolios of knowledge workers is Guru.com, the name says it all.
This brings up another case for describing the Web portfolio and all electronic
portfolios as knowledge age narrative that is built for telling the story of the
knowledge worker to the work for hire audience and public, whoever they may
be. In her 2004 topic,
The Wisdom of Storytelling in an Information Age
,
Dr. Amy Spaulding's thoughts on the importance of story and narrative thinking
present a clear path to the use of the Web portfolio as a new media narrative
