Spring 2010: New Trends in a College Career Planning Course

I’ll be delivering a presentation for my college counseling colleagues at work tomorrow, and I cannot wait. I’ll be discussing the career planning classes that I teach every quarter.

Since many of my colleagues refer students to these classes, I wanted to share more details about them. Several have taught these classes before, and I expect that they will be familiar with some of the content that I will be presenting.

However, I can’t wait to get to the heart of my presentation – the concept of personal branding.

Last week, I met with my colleagues who currently teach or previously taught the classes and asked them if they had heard about or were familiar with the concept of one’s personal brand, especially as it related to one’s career planning efforts.

They had not, and after I briefly explained to them what personal branding was about, a very lively and spirited discussion ensued with each person. Most were excited about the concept, but there was one colleague who surprised me by letting me know that she was horrified by the concept.

She wanted absolutely no part of joining and participating in social networking sites and abhorred the idea of sharing personal information to acquaintances online. She was glad that she was approaching retirement and would not have to deal with the personal branding concept. It was very educational for me to hear her perspective, and touching bases with this small group of colleagues ahead of the actual presentation was a great trial run.

I’ve embedded below the current draft of my presentation slides that will likely be edited before the final version.