Comparative Essay – MGT4303 (25%)

Due beginning of class in Week 10

This essay will compare and contrast your own LinkedIn profile with someone else’s. Choose a professor, upper year student, industry leader or other person with a robust profile. The profile you use for comparison should be one you can learn from and that will help you form recommendations for improving your own profile.

Content

Your introduction should provide a thesis, and then declare which profiles are being compared, and which three to five criteria of comparison will be used. Make sure the criteria for comparison and why you chose them are clear in the introduction.
Your body should compare and contrast the two profiles using the point by point or block method of comparison explained in class.
Your recommendations should show how you can improve your own profile based on the comparison. The focus should be on immediate improvements you can make by including additional elements, but you may also include experience you would like to gain.
Your criteria for comparison and recommendations should take into account what you have learned about selling yourself and building an online presence from Beyond a Resume and from the student presentations.
Your conclusion should summarize your main points and restate your thesis.
Your essay should be 1500-2000 words long.

Format

Include a cover page with the following information:

Title
Your name
Professor Name
Course Name
Date

Your essay should be in 12 point font, single spaced, with paragraphs of a maximum of ten lines.

Style and Mechanics

This is a formal academic essay; however, due to the subject, you may use “I”
PROOFREAD your work!

Citing Sources

The APA doesn’t currently specify how to cite a LinkedIn Profile. I was able to find a blog post (http://associationleadersnetwork.blogspot.ca/2012/07/how-to-cite-linkedin-profile.html) that shows a references entry for a LinkedIn profile should be formatted as follows:

Nicole Schiller Palmisano. (n.d.) LinkedIn [Profile page]. Retrieved July 12. 2012,

from http://www.linkedin.com/profile/edit?trk=hb_tab_pro_top

Any other sources should be referenced according to standard APA format.