Building Your Personal Brand

Taking college courses is a huge step forward in your professional development. But there are additional activities that can also impact your self-awareness and provide credentials sought by employers. Campus career center directors, employers, and internship coordinators repeatedly stress the following suggestions for improving your employability.

1. Take free online courses through LinkedIn, Coursera, Google, or Microsoft. Completion of courses offers evidence of skill development. For instance, Google Analytics for Beginners, Advanced Google Analytics, and Fundamentals of Digital Marketing are all available for free since they boost online education linked to Google’s technology products. Some courses even offer badges you can add to your LinkedIn profile, resume, and cover letters. You can find more information about these programs by reading these two articles from The Report, a source for trends on online education: [2022] 800+ Hours of Free LinkedIn Learning Courses with Free Certification and [2022] 600+ Google Free Certificates and Badges.
2. Join campus clubs and organizations where you can be part of a giving-back project, hone your project-management skills, or simply gain leadership experience. Employers value your initiative.
3. Keep up with current events—read newspapers, blogs, and other news sources that are pertinent to your field—because you’ll need to carry on a conversation and because what we do requires a good sense of what’s going on in the world.
4. Take advantage of campus services. Does your career center offer mock interviews? Will the staff help you develop a resume or edit one you’ve already written? Some colleges even offer short courses on etiquette.
5. Put together a list of possible references. Was your work in a particular course memorable? If so, ask your professor if they would refer you. Does your list of summer jobs indicate increasing responsibility or use of your education? Be certain that all of your references are on board; they must agree to give you an excellent reference and then should be kept in the loop about jobs you’ve applied for or, better yet, been offered.
6. Obtain a certification from HubSpot Academy, a well-known marketing website. Learn about the various certifications it offers by checking out its website.