Algonquin Career Week – Innovation & Connections

Algonquin’s Career Week is underway.  I was fortunate enough to be a speaker yesterday along with many others.  My 45 min. presentation focused on Developing Your Online Personal Brand.  You can find the presentation on Slideshare and I will be presenting it again on Thursday at 2:30pm.  I digress…

I had hoped to attend the session The Future of Careers in Science, Technology & Engineering by Louis Lamontagne but I was called into a meeting and could not make it. While I was checking Twitter after my meeting, I found a link from the Algonquin Students Association of a video version of the presentation.  I thoroughly enjoyed the presentation and was thrilled to see Algonquin being innovative in the use of new tools to share information and promote learning.

As I listened to his insights and words of advice there were many comments that struck a cord with me.  At several points in his presentation he noted the importance of ‘distinguishing’ yourself as a candidate for a position.  His words of advice included adapt and be flexible, be enthusiastic, ask questions, show interest, and get involved.  One of our key messages to our students is about showing initiative.

At the end of his presentation, he stressed the importance of revealing to employers that as a candidate you should be well-rounded. He then suggested getting involved in sports, pick up hobbies and doing volunteer work and overall all to ‘milk this place (the college)’ while you are there. Like Lamontage, we strongly believe that students should be extracting and seeking out experiences during their time at school.  In the end, your goal as a candidate is to distinguishing yourself from the crowd and it takes actions and commitment to do that.  I definitely connected with Lamontage’s view and hope to meet him in person one day soon.

READY, SET…..

We’re on the verge of a new academic term which is very exciting for us.  Within days we will have another 500+ users on the Winter 2010 version of WhyHire.me.  More users, more schools and a lot more changes!  A little daunting at times as we have worked into the wee hours but so incredibly exciting as we see our program grow and develop with the help of our users and their institutions.

Our inaugural term was Fall 2009, when we launched 650 users from Algonquin College, Carleton University and Centennial College onto the system.  We experienced a few bumps with provisioning (we were putting students in the right classes until exam time), interface usability issues (they all want the system to be like Facebook – although I am thrilled that we are being compared to a 350 million user system with thousands of staff, they are big shoes to fill and not the same kind of product), and it was obvious it was time to upgrade the blogging component.

Our students created a group called Facebook vs. Whyhire.me which provided us with feedback as well as the Support group that was set up by us.  In addition to the groups, we have had countless in class and online conversations with users about issues to improve and all of our schools did their own research into the use of WhyHire.me.

Overall, we are thrilled with the results and appreciate the feedback.  The Winter 2010 release will include integration of WordPress (Yeah!), a new Zone that will provide the learning tools in a very dynamic environment for users, and dozens of small changes that will make the usability and experience more enjoyable for everyone.  And of course, we have cleaned up the provisioning and we dramatically simplified our pricing model.

We know that all the students want it for free but as an organization we do not want to develop an advertising based model when the product is being delivered in educational institutions. We just don’t think it’s right and will continue to follow the model of student payment based on institutional, and professor endorsement in a class, similar to the textbook model. Students will receive an account to the social network plus their personal URL, an 80 page eBook and interactive learning modules. The pricing for Winter 2010 is $29 for 12 months or $39 for life. We simplified it for all the different programs and uses.

This term Memorial University will be integrating WhyHire.me into a E-Marketing class and the MBA program. The Ted Rogers School of Business Hospitality and Retail programs (Ryerson University) will be using WHM in two separate HR oriented classes. Algonquin’s PR students will be developing online personal brands and well as the 3rd year Business Marketing students, where we piloted the program last year, and lastly, we will have another gang at Centennial jumping into the world of personal branding.

So, we are on the edge of our seats: uploading, testing, teaching and just on the verge of ………GO.

Let

Social media tools allow people to join together online to discuss, contribute, share, influence and create. The tools that make these functions possible are diverse and changing rapidly.

Most people are aware of Facebook (much more on Facebook in future posts) and MySpace which are social networking tools. Next on the list would be YouTube for video sharing or Flickr for photo sharing. This blog is another form of social media. But more recently we have micrblogging with Twitter or social bookmarking and tagging using a variety of tools including Digg, Technorati or StumbleUpon. The tools keep coming at us and provide us with new ways to connect and affect the world around us. We are no longer the silent masses but individuals that have a voice and the ability to share and promote our thoughts, perspectives and expertise.

The students of tomorrow can take advantage of these tools to market themselves, their ideas, and their differences to potential employers. We want to give them a new platform to develop their professional social media persona but they must also learn to manage their social persona.

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