Students in Elaine Young’s marketing management class at Champlain College are required to brand something ultimately critical to their future career success—themselves. As part of the class, Young requires each student to identify something he or she is passionate about, build their online personal brands through social media, and track their success.

“My overall goal is that they learn the tools, help one another, and get visible online all with the intent that they get jobs,” explains Young, associate professor of marketing. “It’s an interesting process for the students to figure out what they are passionate enough about to keep blogging and tweeting and putting themselves out there.”

Young says that a core group of students are clear on what they want to do. Others, however, are not.

“In doing this assignment, they are learning that a personal brand can evolve and understanding what it really takes to keep it going,” she notes. “They are really gaining a great deal of benefit from networking via Twitter and are finding that when they are followed and retweeted by others, it is very exciting. It motivates them to keep doing the work.”

In terms of the ways in which students and employers communicate, Young sees a big change occurring. Not only are students connecting with internship sites and potential employers through Twitter, blogging, and LinkedIn, but she herself is receiving reference requests through private Twitter messages, and using LinkedIn to provide endorsements of students and to forward job leads to students.

“Now, in addition to the standard cover letter and resume, which are still important, students [can] show their skills through video, blogging, slideshare, LinkedIn, and more, and they all connect to one another,” Young says.

Young says that students need to understand that the fundamentals have not changed—target marketing, clear messaging, understanding the product/service, and goal setting are still integral parts of the curriculum and good business decision-making.

“However, the challenge is to be able to look at the myriad tools that are available and assess their functionality for the business,” Young says.

In her curriculum, Young teaches her students to learn about new tools, including Google Analytics, Twitter, and Foursquare. Under her direction, the class also is exploring a social media monitoring tool called Radian6.

“Learning how to work with this tool will help students understand metrics and measurement, and they can then compare and contrast different ways of understanding marketing success and both quantitative and qualitative measurement tools,” Young explains. “[The students] will be the ones who will have to implement these tools once they graduate.”

In addition to their in-class work, Young encourages her marketing management students to work with Champlain’s career center and attend career center events.

“Outside of the class, I work closely with career services on internships and in providing input and asking advice,” she points out. “We’ve teamed up very nicely and a lot of the work we do to help students get employed is a direct result of the partnership between career services and faculty.”

When asked whether this type of online personal branding component will become a standard part of marketing—and other disciplines’—curriculum in the future, Young thinks it won’t be included in curriculum at all.

“I think it will evolve to a point where this will be a part of career services work because it is about [the job seeker’s] online identity,” Young says. “Much like the resume is a key component, all other forms will be important as well.”

Champlain’s career center, too, has been seeing an upswing in interest in social media by employers and is positioning itself to provide expanded programming and services to students. Dolly Shaw, career services director, says that, for example, an unusually large number of the employer requests for Champlain College interns this year came from companies seeking help creating and improving their online presence. Meanwhile, another employer requests that candidates submit LinkedIn profiles—along with resumes—for positions with his organization.

In addition, Shaw has been asked by the Vermont Human Resource Association to plan a full-day interactive program to educate HR professionals in the state of Vermont on how to maximize the use of social media for recruitment.

“Vermont human resources professionals appear to be increasing use of social media to build reputation; increase, recruit, and screen active and passive candidates; and target potential applicants with specific skill sets,” Shaw says.

Students and graduates with an online presence should expect to be found by college recruiters, hiring managers, and the world-at-large because personal and professional information is easily discoverable, she adds.

“The current reality is that more and more universities and employers screen applicants using social media, and a bad brand or no brand can have a negative impact on an individual’s future,” Shaw says. “Students are urged to make a clean sweep of their ‘digital dirt’ and strategically cultivate and showcase a strong online persona that will shape positive perceptions of them both professionally and personally.”

The growth and interest in social media brings two important challenges to the Champlain College career services office for next year. They are:

• Strategically expanding and cross-connecting with students and alumni through their preferred mediums of communication
• Helping students become more mindful of what they showcase online and teaching them how to build, manage, and safeguard a powerful brand and social and professional network to achieve career success.

Currently, Champlain’s career services staff and faculty are providing education on social media through individual appointments, classes in certain majors, resume and interviewing workshops, and web resources.

“In addition to these current efforts, Champlain will be integrating an educational program in social media for juniors as part of its Life Experience & Action Dimension (LEAD) program, which includes a four-year career-component in preparing students for lifelong career management,” adds Mark Zammuto, senior career adviser.

The goal of the LEAD program is to prepare students to create a personal brand and market themselves in writing, online, and in person.

Each year, students will participate in activities to help them on their path to employment:

• Freshman year—Complete a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Interpretation to help them better understand themselves (skills, interests, and values) so that they can make more informed career choices.
• Sophomore year—Attend workshops called “Strategically Marketing Yourself” and develop the “essential components” of their resumes. The goal is to help students make strategic decisions about school, work, volunteering, and extracurricular activities during the course of their undergraduate degree to enhance their brands in support of their career paths.

Although the junior and senior years are in the planning stages, Shaw and Zammuto say the focus for students will likely be as follows:

• Junior year—Complete an interactive virtual workshop on how to optimize the use of job-search and social media tools to enhance their online presence and marketability to employers on the Internet. Each student will learn how to use a variety of social media tools with a focus on building a personal brand and developing a LinkedIn profile and network of contacts.
• Senior year—Participate in a job or internship fair, “Meet and Mingle” event, business etiquette dinner, elevator pitch competition, or practice interviews with employers, and demonstrate that they have met the identified competencies for effectively networking and marketing themselves in person.

“The heart of why we are using the topic of networking through social media in our career development curriculum is aligned with the age-old wisdom of the familiar quote, ‘It’s not just what you know it’s who you know. And it’s not just who you know, it’s who knows you,’ ” Zammuto says.

Adds Shaw, “Whether students are aware of it or not, employers are able to know more about their candidates than ever before. By teaching the students about opportunities and liabilities of social networking sites, it can raise their awareness of how to responsibly and effectively communicate themselves as candidates. With proper support and instruction, students can tap into the full potential and value of creating a personal brand online and use it to strategically cultivate and showcase their skills and credentials to employers.”

* See Elaine Young’s blog for examples of Champlain College’s marketing management students’ branding efforts.

Need help managing your online brand? Check out Brand Yourself a great tool created by recent Syracuse University alumni.

Article Source: Spotlight Online for Career Services Professionals, March 31, 2010