Remarkable Personal Brands Get Endorsements During College

  • 1 min read

This is a guest post by Jess Neill. Jess is one of Seth Godin’s lucky summer interns. Jess Neill There was a lot of competition for this internship program and just by networking with Seth, I’m sure Jess’s personal brand will never be the same.  During the rest of the year she will be studying advertising, new media and English at the University of Georgia in Athens. She loves marketing, books and while she doesn’t exactly know what she is going to do, she would like to make sure it’s relevant to her brand.  She describes her personal brand as being fearless, passionate, philanthropic, and effective.

Introduction

Everyday in the classroom I see students who are good students, and that’s all they are. When they go to their professor to ask for a recommendation for this internship or that job, they’ll get a good recommendation. Good recommendations are a dime a dozen, and won’t hold up to competition. What you want is a spectacular recommendation. At then end of the course, you want to have formed a relationship with your professor, keeping in mind that every interaction you have is a chance to reinforce your personal brand.

Here are some tips

Your personal brand starts from day one. Show up to class. On time. Seriously, it will ruin you to be that kid who slams the door ten minutes late on the first lecture.

Participate, but don’t dominate. Professors can see straight through BS; they see enough of it. Every time you comment it should add something other than noise to the class discussion.

Talk to your professors outside of class. But don’t just make up something, give some thought to what they can teach you, and then ask them to. Their job revolves around teaching, so you can safely bet that they enjoy it. Professors are also very busy though, so you’re much less likely to get blown off if you genuinely want to learn.  By the end of the class, you should feel that you’ve truly developed a relationship with that professor. And it will pay off, most importantly because they have invaluable knowledge and real world experience.  If the human part didn’t matter, the class would be a set of PowerPoints and textbooks. Forming a relationship with your professor also has more physical rewards, as there are often many faculty nominated awards. Forming the first relationship is the hardest, but the second will come easier, since it’s probable that they will have heard of you from the first.

Just keep your personal brand in mind at all times. How do you want them to think of you? What are the first words that you want to hear when they talk about you to someone else?

Be polite, friendly and enthusiastic, and remember that they’re there for more than just giving you a recommendation at the end, and they’ll know if that’s all you’re there for.

Picture of Dan Schawbel

Dan Schawbel

Dan Schawbel is the Managing Partner of Millennial Branding, a Gen Y research and consulting firm. He is the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Promote Yourself: The New Rules For Career Success (St. Martin’s Press) and the #1 international bestselling book, Me 2.0: 4 Steps to Building Your Future (Kaplan Publishing), which combined have been translated into 15 languages.

TRENDING AROUND THE WEB

If your man does these 8 things, he isn’t holding back because he doesn’t care — he’s holding back because he’s afraid

If your man does these 8 things, he isn’t holding back because he doesn’t care — he’s holding back because he’s afraid

The Vessel
8 quiet signs you’ve been interpreting your suffering as something that was done to you rather than something that moved through you — and what that difference costs over a lifetime

8 quiet signs you’ve been interpreting your suffering as something that was done to you rather than something that moved through you — and what that difference costs over a lifetime

The Vessel
There’s a specific kind of man who seems completely at peace with uncertainty, who speaks calmly about impermanence and acceptance, and almost every one of them spent years in their twenties feeling so lost and unsteady that learning to appear unbothered felt less like wisdom and more like survival

There’s a specific kind of man who seems completely at peace with uncertainty, who speaks calmly about impermanence and acceptance, and almost every one of them spent years in their twenties feeling so lost and unsteady that learning to appear unbothered felt less like wisdom and more like survival

The Vessel
8 things that happen to people who spent decades equating needing others with failure — and what letting that belief go actually looks like in a life

8 things that happen to people who spent decades equating needing others with failure — and what letting that belief go actually looks like in a life

The Vessel
Behavioral scientists found that people who write about their thoughts before a difficult conversation don’t just feel more confident — they’re measurably less likely to say things they later regret, because the writing settles the self before the self has to perform

Behavioral scientists found that people who write about their thoughts before a difficult conversation don’t just feel more confident — they’re measurably less likely to say things they later regret, because the writing settles the self before the self has to perform

The Blog Herald
People who look genuinely younger than their age tend to share these 8 daily habits and most of them have nothing to do with what they put on their face

People who look genuinely younger than their age tend to share these 8 daily habits and most of them have nothing to do with what they put on their face

The Vessel
Load more
CATEGORIES
Explore