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.

Social Media Discussion Continued

I really enjoyed this weeks class.

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.