From Marketing Student to Young Professional

With my internship with the Center for Digital Engagement, I had the opportunity to listen to a panel of recruiters a few weeks ago.  With it I took some valuable tips about finding employment in today's market that you may find useful: Create a powerful open ended statement to describe yourself.  One that will get others to ask you about it. For example, mine is "I can get other people to talk about your company" Specialize, dont be a swiss army knife Companies are looking for someone who is a subject matter expert in certain areas.  It is better to be a master in a few fields rather than proficient in many. Always highlight your top 3 skills  Determine what you are best at, find ways in your social media, resume and in interactions to sell yourself as the product When it comes to today's job market, our networks become more important than ever before.  Who you know can often be more vital than what you know, at least in the stages of finding new

One of the fantastic things about my internship with TrueJob is that, because it is sponsored by Ann Arbor Spark, we have weekly mentoring sessions.  At each of these sessions, the second block of time is spent listening and asking questions at various panels.  The first few discussions took place with prior interns of the clinic at various stages of their careers.  Each session has been really incredible and we have had access to valuable incites. Last night's panel was no exception.  We had the opportunity to speak with Will Foss of Derq and Richard Millunchick of Shoptelligence.  Shoptelligence and Derq, while producing different products for different audiences, both work in the realm of artificial intelligence.  It is no secret that I am not a technically driven individual, but I found what they had to say fascinating. Derq is in the business of predicting the future on roadways.  By studying countless amounts of data images and video, they can tell with serious accuracy i

We all have strengths and weaknesses, and there is always room for improvement.  Just recognizing that fact can lead to success or failure.  To quote Dirty Harry, "A man's got to know his limitations."  Growing up, I've always felt that self improvement is the name of the game.  As long as you are moving forward everyday, eventually, you will reach your goals.  How can you improve yourself if you never ask for an honest evaluation of yourself or your work? In an intern position I am trying to learn more and better myself every day.  Recently I asked my supervisors at TrueJob if they could provide me with some feedback on how my performance is.  I would love to give them everything that they need from me and recognizing where I need to work harder or where I am doing well is all a part of the process. I would recommend that you take a look at yourselves in all aspects of your lives.  Who are you as a person?  What are you good at?  Where do you need to improve? 

My Internship with the Student Veterans of America at Eastern Michigan University has been going great.  With them, I have been managing social media, creating fliers, promoting events and designing different marketing opportunities.  So far I have promoted two separate events, both of which had some pretty great turn outs, one of which was a 5k "Walk and Roll" with the purpose of fighting the veteran suicide epidemic.  The SVA had a team of 8 and there were over 200 participants that attended the event! My other large project for the moment has been editing their logo to make it work better on a t shirt for the organization.  I did this through Photoshop and have been sending it to different shirt companies to get quotes so we can determine where we can get the best deal.  My results with social media have been great.  I have found that most of my posts get a large amount of viewers reached but I would definitely like to drive some more interaction to try to encou

My entire purpose during the course of these internships is to learn as much as I can. This includes developing professional skills, technical skills and aspects of my field that I both enjoy or dislike.  I have been learning several lessons these past few weeks.  With TrueJob I have been composing blog posts about starting a job board.  The largest thing I have struggled with so far has been writing with a specific target reader in mind.  I have been catching myself writing to what seems to be people who already have job boards when I should be trying to reach people who do not have one started yet and are looking to do so.  Once I realized that I need to bear the specific reader in mind my posts became much more targeted.  I have also been assigned a task of designing some social "proofs" to go into their website.  The purpose of these is to show off some of the larger clients who use job boards powered by TrueJob.  I have been creating these with Photoshop.  For the mo

After my first few weeks working with TrueJob, I find the work both highly interesting and exciting. For some background information: TrueJob is a tech startup which specializes in embedding, powering and maintaining job boards in to other organization's existing web sites.    Now, coming on as a Marketing Specialist to an organization which has very limited marketing resources poses some interesting challenges.  Myself and my partner Gabrielle are trying to find ways to seek out organizations to schedule demos with TrueJob.  So far, we are working on the company's blog as well as making suggestions for different social media strategies and ways to make the website more friendly. Because of the limited marketing resources and budget, we really are trying to rely on some different sort of strategies which is what I find most interesting about this whole situation.  All in all I hope to make some sort of meaningful impact in the operations of TrueJob and am excited to s