please check the document below.

Personal Branding

Instructions

You will begin this unit by watching this video (TED Talk by Scott Schwefel - Your personality and your brain) with your class.

Individually, you will prepare a personal branding plan. Read the sections below to help guide your preparation. You will submit your plan in Dropbox under the Personal Branding Plan folder. Please review the Personal Branding rubric for important details on how you will be evaluated.

Estimated completion time: 1-2 hours

Situation Analysis

Note: Refer to the Introspective Activity you submitted in Professional Development 1 and the Skills Inventory you prepared in Module 2 of Professional Development 2 to complete the sections below.

 Internal Assessment: What are your strengths and weaknesses? What can you do to enhance your strengths and minimize your weaknesses? What points of difference or competitive advantage do YOU have? If you don't have one, can you develop one?

 External Analysis: What are the trends in the environmental factors that could impact your job search and career development? These consist of: socio-cultural, economic, technological, competitive, and regulatory factors. What type of background, experiences, strengths, and weaknesses do your competitors have? What market segments (job opportunities) have you identified as having the best potential? How do you fit into these markets?

Focus and Goal Setting

 What are your objectives? Make them specific and measurable!

 What is your target market? Examples might be large public accounting firms, business-to-business sales, and marketing research for a consulting firm, etc.

Marketing Program

 Product: YOU. Know yourself well. Continually improve yourself. Understand how you can meet the needs of your target market—prospective employers!

 Pricing: What salary and compensation package do you want? What are you willing to settle for? What’s the average salary received by competitors in your target market?

 Promotion: Very important. Think about the buying process. How will you create awareness for yourself? What can you do to “break through the clutter” and get the opportunity for an interview? Your personal selling skills will be important for telephone contacts and face-to-face interviews. Probe to find out about the needs of the organization before that “sales call” and during the interview. Have your questions prepared.

Place: What channels have you developed to access your target market, such as associations, personal contacts, professors, etc.? Do some careful research on these. Don’t assume that intensive distribution is necessarily the way to go. Focus your efforts to those target markets that hold promise.

Implementation Phase

Develop a timetable and budget for research, wardrobe, résumés, and travel. Carry out your program. Contact your target market opportunities. Follow-up consistently. Remember that looking for a job requires a significant commitment of your time and effort.

Evaluation Phase

Follow-up on all leads. Find out why you did or didn’t make the cut. Ask at an interview what it was about your résumé that interested them. Even if you don't get the job, you have more insight. Similarly, when you call to follow-up on those cover letters and résumés that you sent out, ask when decisions will be made, when it would be appropriate to call back (and then do it). If you are rejected, call back and ask why. If you exhaust all possibilities in a given target market, go back to your situation analysis and identify new segments. Always send a “Thank You” note.

Personal Marketing Plan

Please use the Personal Marketing Plan Sample provided below as a template.

It is important to complete each section in a detailed and thorough manner. Use as much space as you can. This worksheet serves as your very own “strategic” marketing plan and will help you plan your job search better.

Personal Marketing Plan Sample

STRATEGIC MARKETING PROCESS		MY OWN MARKETING PLAN
	Situation Analysis (SWOT)	Location of Factor	Kind of Factor
Favourable	Unfavourable
Internal: Me  Personality  Formal Education  Job Experience  Motivation  Other:	My Strengths:	My Weaknesses:
External:  Economic  Technical  Legal  Other:	Opportunities For Me:	Threats Affecting Me:
Focus and Goal Setting	My Goals Upon Graduation	Personal Goals:
My Desired Position	Job Description:
My Target Industries, Organizations, and Locations	Industries:
Organizations:
Geographical Areas:
My Uniqueness (Points of Difference)	Personality:
Education & Experience:
Other:
My “Positioning”	How I Compare to Other Job Applicants:

MARKETING PROGRAM		MY OWN MARKETING PLAN
	 Product Strategy (Actions to Improve My “Marketability”)	Formal Education/Courses:
Job Experiences/Projects Completed:
Extra-Curricular/Volunteer Activities:
Obstacles To Overcome:
 Price Strategy	Compensation Sought:
 Promotion Strategy	Résumé, Personal Interviews, and Letters/Telephone Calls:
 Place Strategy	Networking for Contacts and References:
I M P L E M E N T A T PHASE	 Schedule/Budget	Actions to Take/Budget	Deadlines
Marketing Actions (Courses to take, summer jobs to get, résumés to write, clothes to buy, travel arrangements to make, etc.)	1. 2. 3. 4. 5.	1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
PHASE	What Did and Didn’t Work How to Modify Strategy Understandably, this section is typically completed when you have actually gone through the other phases. However, for the purpose of this assignment, for this section: - I would just like for you to talk about how you PLAN to evaluate yourself, your job search strategy/interview skills. - What is your plan to continually learn and to continually improve yourself? - What is your back-up plan? - What ELSE can you do to improve yourself/improve your job search/networking/interview strategy? - Who can you reach out to?