When people want to get hired by a company, they usually try to market themselves and their experience and strengths for the business. In our project, “Marketing Me” it means something altogether different. Marketing Me was a careers based project we did in PLP that prompted us to think about not only who we want to be, but who we are, and what we can utilize from our identities and strengths that will open opportunities in the future.
Marketing Me in a lot of ways is the step before marketing yourself to a company, because it is your base passions and habits that make you, and what they will lead you to become. The goal of this project was to understand ourselves more, as budding people beginning to start thinking about how we will impact this world through our strengths.
Although covering how to market ourselves to employers was an aspect of this project, it was more about finding your long term passions for a goal rather than a simple part time job as a teenager, not to say that isn’t an important part of the process.
But how did we find ourselves? How did we build on to already existing passions and goals and somehow market them to an audience for hopes of feedback and even mentorship? First, we learned about concepts like our 5 core values and positive brain training, which is a concept of self assurance that includes strategies like journaling and meditation. After our mindset work, we got on to the first main piece of this project, building a resume.
Because the end goal of this project was to present it at the PLP Winter Exhibition, we had to cover lots of real-world aspects of self marketing. This is why we learned how to build a resume. For this project, it would be specifically and ‘abridged’ resume, which is essentially built around visual efficiency and graphical information.
Our “Abridged resumes” were overall less professional then a textbook resume. Our resumes included less info about things like experience and qualifications for a specific job, and covered more aspects of ourself, and often things that you wouldn’t need to share with most employers on a resume.
My resume, for example, has far more information on my hobbies, goals, philosophies and habits then my actual work resume. It also has much more visual representation, that is meant for catching the eye of an audience in order for them to come to your booth. Below is my abridged resume.
The abridged resume was only one part of the PLP Winter Exhibition, but what did we use it for? The exhibition was set up so that every student had their own personalized booth, that would represent what aspect of ourselves and aspirations we have.This would be supported by three different physical representations of what best represents your identity, and how this translates to some form of career down the road.
For instance, the basis of my personal choices for the project were business, the outdoors and marketing. I chose these personally because I love the idea of marketing my own love for the outdoors to others in the sense of preservation, appreciation and respect.
I gave real world examples of this through my own experience in training to become a camp counsellor at the Laana Dangang.nga Swan Bay Rediscovery Camp at Haida Gwaii, where we teach kids how to appreciate Gwaii Haanas, the protected national park reserve of Haida Gwaii. The physical objects I used to explain this aspect of the outdoors and marketing were my hiking setup, so boots, gloves, headlamp, etc. and a hiking travelogue.
The hiking travelogue is essentially a collection of videotaped mountains and hikes I’ve done, with their location and difficulty included. It was really fun to make, and I think it expresses what I enjoy doing, and also how it connects with the goal of the project, which was ultamately how can you market yourself, and therefor something you enjoy, to an audience. Below is the video.
Presenting this video on my iPad for the winter exhibition was kind of problematic as it was a bit long as you can see, but nevertheless I think most people passing by who bothered to look got an important portion of it, and understood what was behind it. Thanks for watching!
