Jack Abbot- General Reporter
The Office of Career and Professional Development hosted a luncheon on March 26 to discuss branding and career resources on campus.
The main speaker for the event was Associate Dean of Career and Student Success Thierry Thesatus. His presentation, “Exploring Mastering Influence, Networking and Personal Branding” focused on how students at the university can form a personal brand for themselves.
“Personal branding is really being able to understand who you are, understand your strengths and values that you bring to the table and being able to market that out to others,” Thesatus said. “It’s especially important because this is something that you’re going to be known by.”
Thesatus made a comparison to branding from companies. Companies find traits or aspects about themselves that make them unique and useful and emphasize those to separate themselves apart from other companies.
People, likewise, should understand what makes them unique and emphasize those traits when entering the workforce to advertise themselves to employers.
According to Thesatus, the strongest brands are powerful, authentic, consistent, visible or valuable.
The presentation began with information about the Office of Career and Professional Development and the resources they offer to students.
“It is one of the most important offices on any college campus,” Thesatus said. “The goal of you being here in school is to ultimately graduate with your degree and then transition into your career.”
The services of this office were broken into three categories: employment advising, employment services and career exploration.
Employment advising is information and training to help students prepare to enter the work force with things such as cover letters and resume workshops and job search strategies. Employment services are the events and resources on campus like the JOBS portal or the career fairs that help students connect with employers. Career exploration is information that can help students to find their desired career path.
“We have different industry fairs in different areas. We had healthcare and public health. We had communications and media marketing. We had business and STEM,” Thesatus said.
Thesatus also emphasized the importance of online branding. He said that two out of five companies have indicated that they use algorithms to search for employment candidates online, with many basing their hiring decisions on what they find. Thus, it is important to keep public social media posts or other online information professional and appropriate.
The final part of the presentation centered around “A Technique for Producing Ideas” by James Young, which attendants were provided with. In this book, the technique that Young suggests the readers should follow is simply being open to learning more about =topics of importance.
