Let's see how to edit your résumé, goals, and skills.
- Click on the Résumé tab under the Content submenu.
- The Introduction section asks you to type in a cover letter and some personal information. Type in some information about yourself in this section. What is it that you do? This is about your writing style and how you want to represent yourself — do you want to write formally or informally? Don't forget to click on the Save button immediately after you have entered your information.
- Now, click on the Education & Employment tab. Use this section to fill in all your past education qualifications. Just click on Add to start filling out a new listing. You should see that you can add details such as the dates of the education placement, its name and address, and details of the qualification you gained there. Here is a listing that Janet entered for her own Master's degree:
- Do the same for your previous employments.
- Click into the Achievements tab and list any of your certifications, accreditations, awards, books and publications, or professional memberships.
- Click into the Goals tab and write up your three different types of goals.
- Click into the Skills tab and write up your three different types of skills.
- Finally, click into the Interests tab and fill out all the things you like doing in your spare time.
You just completed your first online résumé! Now, that probably seemed like a lot to do all in one go, but don't forget that your résumé will evolve over time; as such, don't feel like you need to get everything perfect first time. You could even write in a few unfinished ideas to start with. Don't forget, this information is now stored in Mahara. The beauty of this, of course, is that you need to go through this process only once, then in the future you will only need to make updates depending on changes in career or skill sets. This is much better than having to update a word-processed document!
We encourage you to use Mahara to become a reflective learner. It can be a useful self-developmental process:
- Set yourself to concrete, academic, educational, and career-related goals that you then strive to achieve: It is all too easy to just roll on from one year to the next. Some people have twenty years' worth of experience, other people have one year's worth of experience twenty times. Mahara is encouraging you to be a bit more proactive with your life than this. Why not push yourself? Set yourself some forward-looking targets and then strive to achieve them.
- Honestly, openly, and critically self-evaluate your skills: It is just as important that you are able to identify what you can do as it is for you to be able to identify what you want to be able to do or achieve. Use the Mahara skills section to see if you can be honest and open with yourself about where your own skills and strengths actually lie. Are you intellectually and emotionally mature enough to actually be able to identify what you are good at? Many people find this difficult. Using Mahara can help you to get better at doing this.
- How many profile pictures can you upload to your profile?
- Where can you see your default profile picture?
- In which section of your portfolio should you be adding career related targets?
- a. Goals
- b. Skills
- c. Contact information
- d. Résumé
In the preceding section, you saw that you can add links to your messaging nicknames in your profile information. Mahara is encouraging you to play with some live messenger and audio/video conferencing clients such as Skype and Jabber. If you are not using these already, visit www.skype.com or www.jabber.org, and sign up. You could also add your MSN, AIM, or Yahoo! accounts. You can now share this information with other users on your profile page as we'll see in the next section, so that people will have a different way of getting in touch with you.