Why should we hire you?
– Every hiring manager ever
In this post I’ll be reflecting on the work we did in our PGP (Personal Growth Plan) class (essentially careers class but PLP). Specifically I’ll be focusing on the work we did to market ourselves to employers. Our driving question was
How can I effectively market myself to employers?
Resumes and business cards are some of the more commonly known and effective ways to market yourself. These allow you to provide information about yourself and why someone should hire you. Having a template email and being prepared for a job interview are also important, as they allow you to present yourself in the best possible way. Together, all these are essential to successfully marketing yourself to potential employers.
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Business Cards
You’re probably thinking “that does NOT look like a professional way to market yourself…” You would be correct. We first made fun business cards and had a competition for the funniest and most stylistic business card. I didn’t win first, but I was in the top ranks.
We then made actual professional business cards. I made these two versions:
I found it a bit challenging to come up with a design, but with some inspiration from my friends’ business cards I was able to create the cards you see above.
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Resumes
We created two resumes: one with a photo, and one without. I already had a resume from when I applied to my lifeguarding job at NVRC, but I was able to add said job to my resume for when I apply for another job in the future. It was very challenging to write a generalized objective that wasn’t targeted at a specific company, but obviously if I were to apply for a position I would create a targeted objective. I originally didn’t think I was going to like having my photo on my resume, but I actually really like the way it turned out. Check them out below:
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We also created a template email to send to a potential employer. I found it somewhat confusing to figure out what one should say in an email to someone you want to hire you, but with the help of Mr. Harris and my friends I was able to create this:
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Interviews
We then conducted mock interviews. I worked with Faith and Ariane to create a mock interview video. I had a really fun time using the new Cinematic Mode on Faith’s iPhone 13 to get a shallow depth of field. We unfortunately forgot to adjust the height of the second camera, which resulted in a bit more editing work for Faith in order to use only one angle. I learned that I need to be a LOT less monotone if I do an actual job interview. Check out the final mock-interview including some funny bloopers:
Creating all these self-marketing tools allowed me to use the curricular competency “Analyzing: I can identify, analyze, and represent supportable conclusions having evaluated relevance, authenticity, and bias from a variety of sources.”
I hope to use these marketing tools in the future and I think they will allow me to be more prepared and appear as a person who an employer would want to hire.
If you could make a funny business card, what would your job be? Let me know in the comments below!
Thanks for reading!