Marketing Yourself

What does marketing yourself mean? If you're still trying to figure out what the answer to this question is, let me clear it up for you. 

Just like a company, lets say Under Armour, wants to market it's new t-shirt line so that your impressions of the new t-shirts fit their exact standards, you should want to market yourself to professionals so that their impressions of you fit your exact standards.

Under Armour will market the quality, style, and new cold temp technology with marketing campaigns,  celebrity endorsements, cool commercials, and sex appeal to put an image in your mind that makes the t-shirts cool. Clearly we don't have the money, resources, and sex appeal ;) to market ourselves like this but we have plenty of tools at our disposal. Resumes, social media, appearance, and networking are all tools you should be using to market yourself in the professional world. 

Resumes are the most important. Always keep your resume up-to-date with your skills, jobs, and education. This is the easiest way to market yourself. A good resume will be the quickest way to finding to a job. 

Social media might be the hardest for some but it should be the easiest. Think of celebrities and various famous people and how they might have tarnished their image by a simple tweet. Think of what you have tweeted in the last week (especially over the weekend after one to many beers!). Inappropriate tweets can tarnish your professional image and get you thrown out of a job hunt. 

You might think appearance doesn't matter but first impressions are everything in the business world. First impressions are made within the first 6 seconds of meeting someone and if you haven't heard by now, getting the job you want is about "who you know" not "what you know". If everyone you know thinks your slob, then recommending you could tarnish their image.

These are just some of the tools to marketing yourself as a college professional. These tools should be used to put how you want to be viewed into the minds of others. Do you want people to see you as an unprofessional, lazy college student who shows up late to everything with the motivation of a hungover college freshmen? Or would you rather be seen as an innovative millennial who will outwork the competition and works well in a fast-paced, collaborative environment? 

College is where some careers go to die and others flourish. If you want to be successful look at every opportunity as a way to market yourself.