Tag: business

Marketing Myself

Helloooo world of blog. I haven’t really done any blog posts yet this year specifically about my careers class so guess what we are talking about today? Yep my Personal Growth planning aka PGP aka Careers class and what we’ve been working on.

So how does one market themselves? In this case, I am talking about marketing yourself in terms of job opportunities through things like resumes and business cards. The choices that you make when choosing how to present yourself to potential employers can greatly influence your chances of getting that job. So this section of our PGP class set out to prepare us for the job hunting and professional self-presentation of our futures.

Driving Question;

How do I make career life choices?

Answer – planning. Let me explain;

We started by looking at our dream careers and our realistic careers, what those jobs would initial and what the prerequisites were. And then finding the prerequisites for those prerequisites and so on. What schools do you want to go to? How far from home are you willing to travel for university/college? What degree do you need? Where do you want to end up living? What’s your financial situation going to look like? Etc. Answering all these questions is essential to planning out any career life choice you make. Tracing out where you want to go and how to get there is how you make career life choices, or at least how you make good career life choices.

And to help us start making these career life choices, we started answering the question “How can I effectively market myself to employers?” To convey our answers to this question, we each made new resumes, business cards, and a cover letter draft that we could send out to potential employers.

The Resumes

Above you will see my updated resumes that I made during this course. I really like the one that has my picture on it because it separates my qualities/soft skills from my skills. An employer can make their decision just by a quick glance over a resume so it is important that they are neat and organized in layout. I think I did a wonderful job creating an appealing resume that accurately reflects me marketing myself.

The Business Cards

As you can see above, I have 2 different business cards. One I chose to do a simple black and white with minimal information and personality, the other is coloured and has some line graphics on it. I like the beige aesthetic one because it feels more personal and includes my title as student/sales associate.

The Mock Interview

Finally, we did mock job interviews. My partner Dana and I spent a lot of time carefully picking out interview questions that we thought displayed a good mix of our skills and personality, being sincere with our answers as well. We came into school dressed professionally and ready to shoot. We then dressed up and filmed the interview with both people answering and asking the questions. Practicing like it was a real interview helped me feel better prepared for any interviews I will have to do in the future because I already know what questions may be thrown at me and how I should respond to show off my best self. I think this interview shows off my skills in communication and my passion for my interests, but I’ll let you judge for yourself. Here is the video Dana and I made (I’m the brunette);

Conclusion

Overall this section of PGP has made me feel more confident in my abilities to get another job in the future when I leave the one I am currently at. I am excited to use my new resumes and maybe even hand out a business card or two. It was sometimes difficult to find colours or fonts that matched my personality, and trust me you can spend a very long time flipping through fonts that just dont feel quite right. But being able to critically think about one’s future is a skill I have always loved to use and exercising that in this project was very helpful for me. Thanks for reading!

As Always, Brooke

Linear Labs Artisan Jewelry

Greetings fellow earthlings. Welcome to another scimatics post on this ghastly blog of mine. I am currently writing this in my bedroom where I have been glued to a tissue box and a whole plethora of cold medications in my system. If you didn’t get it already, I’m sick (not covid).

Project Overview

This project was called “Time is Money” but for some reason I’ve been calling it “Time Beith Money” like in an old-English type of flare. Anywho, in this project we were to create a small business selling products or a service and learn about finance though linear relations. I chose to make a small jewelry store through Instagram and sell some cute lil’ accessories to my friends. Now I am no wiz at math but eventually I did catch on to this whole algebra thing and boy is it helpful to know how to do.

Driving Question

How can we predict our finances for the future?

With calculating your expenses (living), startup costs, sale price (income), and time, you can get a pretty accurate estimate of how sustainable your finances are. Using a linear relations equation like where and putting the equation into a graph where the y axis represents profits and the x axis represents hours of work, you can get a visible representation of your financial situation.

Curricular Competencies

Communicating and representing: Represent mathematical ideas in concrete, pictorial, and symbolic form

I successfully used a linear equation to determine my profits. I calculated my hourly wages, predicted NET earnings for a year, and how much money I had made (and lost) over the actual amount of time that I worked for. My graphs are clear and functional, and I labeled them for easy understanding.

Understanding and solving: Apply multiple strategies to solve problems in both abstract and contextualized situations

I calculated all of the time, materials, equipment, and impact, in the cost of making my products. I used recycled materials and used a digital method of selling my product in order to create less waste. I chose to make products that I already had most of the materials to make, and still calculated the cost of the items that I had bought long ago.

Connecting and reflecting: Connect mathematical concepts to each other and to other areas and personal interests.

My business is sadly not sustainable as a full time job. I think this is partially due to the fact that I grossly under-priced my products for the security of making transactions. Realistically I should’ve priced my products in a way that would have me make more money on every transaction, which wasn’t the case mainly for the engraved items. Other businesses in the class, like Dana’s cookie sale, would make more money annually than I would but they both would not be sustainable as a full time job. Maybe with some remodelling and another go at this I could make a more sustainable business.

Conclusion

Honestly we do a lot of connecting our projects to the “real world” but I think this one was the first project that I think actually has an important connection to my future. I have always been interested in owning my own business/practice and this type of math is super important in that line of work and just general adult life. So now I can proudly say that I can do algebra and understand linear relations!!!

Thanks for taking the time to read this!

As always, Brooke.