The purpose of this activity is to emphasis the skills associated with storytelling within an interview. These skills are beneficial when being asked questions during an interview.
Part One:
Part Two:
Week 4 Reflection: RISE Self-Evaluation
The purpose of this activity is to reflect on our progress through the course. This allows one to see what they completed and what they still need to work on.
Week 3: Integrative Learning: Clarify Your Message
The purpose of this activity is to help in the finalization of our portfolio sites. To ensure that we have a clear message as to what are professional brand represents and what we are capable of as professional.
(ONE) When you view my professional portfolio site, it’s obvious that I am pursuing a career that involves branding, design and marketing/advertising. This is not only mentioned in the about me section of my site but when you proceed on to view my sample works.
((TWO)) Upon viewing the available samples of my work, I have available, you can see the primary focus is on branding, website development, ad creations and media publications (press releases). This shows my audience that I am capable of help a business with the branding and/or marketing of their business or company.
(((THREE))) When you visit my portfolio site, you know I’m available to work with small businesses or non for profit brands that are looking for creative and innovative branding or marketing.
Week 2: Industry Resume
The purpose of this activity is to show not only improvement on the development of one’s resume but that we acquired skills from the learning materials. The skills developed in this lesson are crucial for current and future job searching.
While prior to this week’s activities, I had never heard of JobScan before. I had learned previously had you needed to edit your resume based on the job you were applying for but I didn’t fully understand how much “tailoring” needed to go into the resume.
The originally JobScan had been my current resume that I was using actively to apply for jobs. The job descriptions that I used in the original scan was an actual job I had been perusing. When I completed the scan, I was shocked by the fact that it only came in at 23% for a match. This was enlightening in how much editing that I needed to put into my resume. It also put into perspective that the lack of interest from some employers could be from the lack of compatibility between job and resume.
After going back to rereading the job description and the JobScan, I edited my resume based on the skills, requirements and qualifications for the job. I then “rescanned” with the updated resume to come in at 61%. This was utterly disappointing because I was sure I put in enough edits. Alternatively, your resume needs to be specifically tailored to each job posting well enough to stand out to that employers. I will most certain take this lesson as a vital life skill not just for graduation but for all future job searches.
Week 2 Integrative Learning: Scanning Your Resume
The purpose of this activity is to help ensure that when submitting a resume to an employer, the appropriate skills, education and target are clearly shown. This will also help us strength the development of our resume.
Prior to this activity I had never even heard of the site called “JobScan”. When I developed my resume I thought that it was very well designed and gave a lot of important information about my past employment experiences, education and skills. I proceed to execute a JobScan and the results were shocking. I scored an extremely low score with a job that I had actually recently applied too. This definitely was enlighten in how I need to go back and really revise my resume. Updating my resume to information that is more relevant to the job I am trying to apply to and to keep information that isn’t relevant to my field, even if its past experiences, off my resume.
Week 2: Professional Digital Presence
The purpose of this activity is to develop a professional profile that not only i marketed to our target audience but effectively represents the personal brand we’ve developed.
Since graduation is approaching rapidly, I’ve been consistently updating my LinkedIn profile to keep up with what my target future employer would want to see. Focusing on the skills that are vital the what my brand is capable of, yet always updating newly acquired skills to show continued development in the field.
While I think that my LinkedIn profile is well put together, it shows that I have had vast amounts for educations and have developed a lot of skills over time. I think that the biggest factor that would contribute me having a harder time being hired would be the lack of experience. I think this could easily be remedied by doing volunteer projects or assisting others in projects but at this current time I thinks it’s a downfall to prospective employers.
I’ve developed my whole linked in profile based on my brand, everything from the focus, to the skills and even linking my portfolio site. After modification of my profile, I am hoping with graduation weeks away this will give me an opportunity to discover or be discovered by my future career.
Week 1 Integrative Learning: Identifying Career Goals & Opportunities
The purpose of this activity is to set both short term and long term goals for our professional future. This also allows one to determine what direction they are looking to take after graduation.
While most who graduate plan on looking for a job immediately after graduation, I plan on taking a short break to get some hands-on skills. Since taking MCBS online allowed me to work on developing my skills, I feel that I didn’t get enough hands-on experience to feel comfortable jumping to a career. Over the course of about 6 months (from graduation to Fall 2018) I plan to seek and executing volunteer work to strength my skills, network and get involved with different companies and brands. I feel this will help me professional not just skill based but will open new paths when it comes to networking and marketing myself.
After acquiring enough skills, creating connections, networking and building a brand I feel that I’d be ready to reach my final professional goal of creating and running my own branding, marketing and advertising brand. While I want to have a primary focus on small, innovative and charitable companies that are more local to the Fort Bend County Area (western suburb of Houston). From collaborating with small businesses, creating local events and promoting new companies.
In the media field, there is numerous career paths that can be chosen, I primarily want to focus on the skill sets of branding, marketing, advertising, social media manager and touch lightly on PR work. While most of these play a strong role together especially when it comes to opening a firm that helps other businesses.
Below are different job postings I’d be interested in applying for after graduation:
Week 1: Target Audience
Target List (Houston Metro Area)
The purpose of this activity is to learn and utilize skills necessary to create a target job market. Not limited to but including the skills to unlock a “hidden job market”.
While creating a “target market” list for possible future employees there were specific values that went into which companies I chose. In the Houston Metro Area there are numerous media, advertising and marketing companies but not all paralleled to what core values I had for my personal brands.
Small, Innovative or Charitable Businesses –
When searching and selecting these companies, the ones that stood out where the ones who’s portfolios focused on smaller businesses, non-profits/charities or very innovative brands. Instead of companies that work with just every run-of-the-mill businesses, they focus on creating specific branding, marketing and advertising for their clients.
Unique & Creative Collaborations-
Just as a client wants to see the work that the company creates, as an employee or team member you want to see what representation you will be with the company. Do you want to be involved with a company that creates average work? As a prospective team member, I took the time to look at the portfolios and creations of each of these companies to see the creative and unimagined creations that they developed for their clients.
Work Hard, Play Hard Environment-
The environment you work in can determine your creative flow and you outward feelings about your job. When creating my targeted list I was looking for companies where I would be working on a team aspect versus just being another “employee” to the company. The companies I added not only talked about their “team” but went one t mention the laid back environment, the employee incentives and the events that take place for all members.
RISE Self Evaluation
The following video below is a self evaluation of the work we have completed over the last course. It’s purpose it to reflect back on what we accomplished and how we can grow for that in the future.
Content Development and Enhancement
Below in this assignment you will see three different portfolio project that were completed in a previous class. Following I will include the improvement to each of the projects and detail as to why.
Timber Shave Club Magazine AD:
This project was a piece of many from Graphic Design in Media Communications course. While I personally felt that with this project I was under some time constraint when it came to the design and layout aspects. I wasn’t in love with the turn out but I didn’t hate it either. I felt that this magazine ad needed some adjustments when it came to the logo. I felt that the original design had some flaws, especially when it came to the mustache in the logo. I went back and edited the text in the logo to make it more legible. Secondly, I went in and scaled the size of the mustache to a smaller one. I felt that after doing so it didn’t make the mustache appear to be “over powering”. I adjusted the text on the address portion of the ad to make it appear crisp and clear. I felt that after these revision were make, the ad became easier to read and the important information stood out clear to a potential customer.
Reel Deal Tacos Website:
The following project is from Editing for the Web course. While the final feedback I had received from this class after I had completed my revisions was that it was suitable for being put into my portfolio. With that being said I didn’t make too many edits on this since there wasn’t any majors ones that needed to be fixed. I had completed some basic grammar check, adjusting hue/color and so on. I think that this is a good starting project piece to be apart of my portfolio, while down the road I hope to add more professional pieces.
Personal Branding Business Card:
This final project revision was from this current Portfolio course. After the feedback given from my instructor in regards to the business card, and she even provided a mock-up, I decided to edit the design. Instead of having a pink border around the business card I decided to change it to a solid black border. Additionally, since there seemed to be some issues with alignment, I decided to remove the small pink pineapple from the logo and to set it behind the text portion of the logo. I felt that this gave it a cleaner look while still incorporating the signature mark for my brand.
thepersuasivepencil 