A guest post by Violetta Yan

An average of $8M total of annual investment is put into business intelligence by large enterprises. For each $1 spent on business intelligence, billion-dollar companies earn about $11. In other words, learning about us, individuals, is paying off extremely well. And as an individual whose data is being gathered, I don’t mind, if this is done ethically and professionally, because, as many other consumers[1], I want companies to serve me when I use GPS navigator to get faster to my desired destination or I watch recommended best documentaries by Netflix. But is that all I can get? I believe not.

Specifically, I am thinking about data portraying me as a professional. How am I portrated to add value to the community and economy. Its really a magic mix that will position me as an individual differently from others and, ideally, this provides me strong competitive advantage. This mix is changing and hopefully developing, not regressing  over time, and, positioning me for the best success possible. My information should be smartly managed and disclosed. My being able to do this, however, is yet hindered by three dilemmas:

Sharing vs. Not

As a rational person, I don’t like giving up information about myself if I don’t feel it that I will receive professional and ethical treatment. Also, I need to know that the benefit of doing so will be greater than potential costs. Feeling uncertain about online personal data sharing, I was always rather passive on all my online platforms. However, a couple of months ago, a friend of mine got her great job at a big reputable company; thanks to her being able to share some data about herself online. She got into the “consideration bin” of that company, the dream of many, after writing several blog posts, sharing opinions in her professional membership groups and making her individual profile information public. And this is happening more and more often. Companies probe relatively “transparent” and “visible” individuals who have consistent and a well-articulated online persona rather than unknown dark horses. Had my friend been closed to the outer world, solely relying on the traditional hiring process, the chance that she would get into selection process and consequently land with the job would have been significantly smaller. She would not have got the job in the first place because she was not really targeting it. What were the costs associated with this online sharing? Some fractions of productive time, I guess. This made me give up my resistance to go and share online.

Collaboration vs. Not

We live in the world of unprecedented accessibility and interconnection between people, companies and processes across industries and geographies. Every single job title we held is a basic reflection of our interactions with others. And every job-related achievement we claim is often, if not always, not possible without inputs by others. Therefore, I’d love to keep some records of my professional experiences jointly with my team members. I’ll feel more comfortable in claiming those values and would better trust those value claims by the others. The degree of responsiveness to such insight would also inform me about real vs. perceived level and quality of teamwork in each particular instance.

Meritocracy vs. Ambiguity

It is warm and safe to rest in ambiguous positive endorsements on LinkedIn. But, this accommodation costs us an opportunity to raise our own awareness about and understanding of our own strengths and weaknesses, our most operational set of skills, and least valued expertise. And I’d be willing to expose myself to my colleagues’ assessment and to get their valuable feedback as a free, immediate and most relevant advice to grow further. I believe that such exchanges of feedback will soon become normal routine. This will help with our focus on our own capacity building.

Individuals need some tools and indicators to watch their own performance and competitiveness to attain our professional development goals. For this to happen, going online should be more than just resume posted online or an exchange of opinions about something/somebody else but about us. If we open ourselves up to online collaboration with people we work to enhance each other’s awareness about ourselves and provide targeted and collectively weighted feedback, we will have a greater chance to live the life we want and become the people and professionals we’d like to be. And this will be the greatest return on the investment into our personal data sharing and “business intelligence”.

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