During the Personal Brand seminar, the first thing Beverly told us to do was to google ourselves and to see what pops up. I was surprised to learn that recruiters may just google your name to get more information about you.
“Make sure nothing inappropriate comes up, so keep your social platforms clean and professional for the most part,” she said as we whipped out our phones to google ourselves. It’s amazing how much information one can grasp about a potential employee online. Therefore, Beverly stressed the importance of regularly updating our resumes, Linkedin profiles, Handshake profiles, cover letters, etc.
To be honest, I don’t follow this advice quite well, and often end up scrambling to touch up and fix my resume right before the career fair or submitting an application for a potential internship. These times are often stressful and makes the whole application process longer than it needs to be. I’m going to try to update my profiles and resumes more frequently as I gain more experience. Also, she mentioned that you can adapt your resume when applying to different types of jobs. For example, if you’re applying to intern at a pediatric office, you can include experiences involving working with children or in similar setting, and omit the experiences that don’t directly relate to this field.
This was quite valuable to me, because I often send the same resume when applying to different jobs. Nonetheless, now I know how to customize to fit the company’s requirements for a potential job.
Additionally, another thing that Beverly emphasized is the fact that you should have a loose idea of what your personal pitch should be. She explained that you shouldn’t have a set script of what you’re going to say, because then it sounds like you’re giving a presentation instead of having a conversation with the recruiter. This especially struck me, since I went into the fall 2018 career fair using the script method. Now, I know how I can improve for next time, by using the personal pitch as a springboard for greater conversation with the recruiter.
I’m pleasantly surprised about how much stuff I learned during this seminar; I feel like having someone physically tell us some tips and tricks makes me remember and learn more than from just reading some tips online.
Thank you for sharing a really interesting method to check out yourself as a potential employee. Although I am considering grad school, I believe this piece of advice is still useful to me. I kind of guess nowadays the employers, whether in companies or in research groups, are more and more prone to try to know you as a person instead of data. But lo and behold I can barely get anything from google by searching for myself except profiles of a bunch of people sharing the same name with me…lol. I may have to deal with my own LinkedIn etc. as the need grows.
I agree that the whole process of preparing for the career fair and applying for jobs is tedious. As full time students, it is especially difficult to find time to polish my resume before a career event while balancing multiple academic deadlines and extracurricular activities. This event sounded very helpful and I kind of regret not going.