Over the Hump & Playing in Their New Sandbox
It’s the end of October and also the middle of midterms for college and university students across the country. I guess you could say we are over the ‘hump’ of the first term. Getting over the hump means that we have activity in the WhyHire.me portal. Most students are 60-75% finished their learning modules. We are starting to see new photos uploaded, pitches being written, blog posts going up and videos being loaded. And for the most part, unless you are in one of our classes, you can’t see any of it.
You can’t see anything because you are not in a class that has adopted WhyHire.me as a program and learning environment for personal branding. Those that have chosen to use the program have closed the doors to the public while they learn and explore the world of social networking for personal branding. Yes, this generation is very aware of social networks because of Facebook, MySpace and YouTube but they are not familiar or comfortable with using social networks for developing a professional presence. That’s why we have developed a place where they can learn and experiment with their classmates and professors. We’re also playing with them in their new sandbox. We have 14 classrooms involved in business programs at Algonquin College, Centennial College and Carleton University.
I spoke to a few classes recently and here are a few comments from students in the class:
“The presentation was great, I really enjoyed it even though it was pretty early on a Friday morning. I can say it was very inspiring for me, gave me new ideas on to what I can do with me as a brand.”
“After your talk today (which very much inspired me), I was thinking I would film an introduction video of myself for the profile. A sort of visual media piece to make me stand out and inform people of what I’m about.”
“I think the lessons and system are very educational. The creativity and thought put into this system is very much appreciated. It’s about time we started stepping away from just the traditional resumes and use technology to help promote ourselves. Congratulations to you and your team for being so innovative and allowing a new perspective into the education system.”
I’m looking forward to the second part of the term, as more students play, experiment and start to understand the power of the developing their own personal brand.
