Networking Part 2

On Wednesday, April 20th, I visited the career center for another walk in appointment. I got to meet with Meghan again which was nice because she already knew the basics about me and my major so we didn’t have to go over them again. During this meeting, I asked about experience after graduation. A lot of my job experience isn’t necessarily relevant to what I want to do later in life.

Meghan made a good suggestion of having on valuable experience per semester and then by the time you graduate you have 6-8 experiences that you can put on your resume. She said they don’t all have to be jobs that you work at 20+ hours a week, they can be volunteer experience or other things like that. I asked about  certifications in programs such as the Adobe Suite and she said that would be great to put on a resume, but also even if you aren’t certified, you can list that you have experience with them or learn more through things such as YouTube tutorials and list that you self taught yourself. She also recommend that I list that I made my own website and have photography clients. She said that at lot of the administrative aspects of my photography are relevant to Ad and PR.

At the end of my visit, Meghan set me up with the career advisor that specifically works with Ad and PR students. I have a meeting with Lisa scheduled for May 11 at 1 pm. I plan to talk with Lisa about ways to build my portfolio to include sample from both my photography as well as my advertising work and present it in a unique and interesting way. After setting up a meeting Meghan was in a rush to get to her next meeting so I didn’t have a chance to get a selfie with her, but I took a selfie with the poster outside the career center and took a picture of my appointment card for May 11 as well as Meghan’s business card as shown below.

Karwoski, O. (20 April 2016) Career Center Vist. [Photograph]

Karwoski, O. (20 April 2016) Career Center Selfie. [Photograph]

 

 

Google Analytics

Karwoski, O. (13 April 2016) Google Analytics. [Screenshot] 

Google Analytics is a great way for tracking data from your website. They offer free courses where you can learn about various aspects. I took the fundamental courses where i learned about conversions, key metrics and dimensions, filters, AdWords, ecommerce reports, and much more.

Each lesson has a video, as well as a text transcript, followed by a few short questions to test what you just learned. They also provide additional readings if you are struggling with specific sections. I thought the course was structured well and made it possible to get the most out of this learning experience.

You can become Google Analytics Certified by taking a free 70 question exam to prove your knowledge. Instead, for our class, we took a test that just tested our knowledge pertaining to the fundamentals course. Above is a screenshot of my results. If I were to become certified, however, this would be a valuable asset to include on my resume and may set me above from other applicants. I may still choose to take the test later when I start applying for other jobs and internships that pertain to Advertising.

Career Center Vist

Karwoski, O. (13 April 2016) Career Center. [Personal Photograph.]

On Wednesday, April 13, I went to the career center for a walk in appointment. Before this class, I wasn’t even aware we had a career center with free advising on campus. I met with Meghan and we talked about resumes. Currently, my resume is just a simple word template resume but with my fields, I want to make my resume make me stand out to employers. We talked about use InDesign to great a resume that can show off my skills with the software as well as looking clean and presented nicely.

My next question was about experience from during high school, Meghan told me this is very person dependent because of other experience you may that that is more recent but also how relevant the older experience is. For example, she suggested I keep high school yearbook as a bullet point but take of a job that I had my sophomore year because it was awhile ago and I have newer and more relevant experience.

We also briefly talked about cover letters and how these should not just be a summary of your resume, but rather you should do some research about the specific company and talk about how your experience and skills would be a valuable asset to them.

When I left, she gave me a packet with information on what type of things to include in a resume. One thing that she said may be valuable for me would be to include a section with relevant course work, which I hadn’t considered before. She suggested I make a resume that shows a little more of my creativity and adds some of the elements we discussed to bring back in to meet with the person who deals specifically with advertising students. Over all, this meeting was very helpful and I plan to go back.

 

Social Media in 2016

Karwoski, O. (9 April 2016) Top Sites. [Screenshot]

Today, in the USA, it is practically impossible to avoid all forms of social media. It is everywhere we turn. Everyone has it, even our grandmas. Business also use it as a major platform in their marketing. I am guilty of checking my numerous accounts 10+ times a day. But who could resist, you can keep family and friends up to date on the latest events in your life, both the big such as getting hired for a new job and the small like what you had to dinner. You can follow all your favorite brands and celebrities so you don’t miss a thing. Business can promote themselves and ongoing promotions. The possibilities and benefits are endless.

Although social media comes with many benefits, it also comes with consequences. Ann Smarty pointed out some of “The Bad” associated with social media in an article called “Social Media and Society: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” She brings up the valid point that often people hind behind their screens because it gives you a feeling of being social without actually socializing. Some additional issues include the permanence of everything you post. Jenny Q. Ta talks about what a large issue cyber bullying has become using social media as an outlet.

Personally, I use social media as a way to keep friends and family up to date on my life. More recently, I have started using it as a way of branding myself in my photography such as sharing links to my websites on my various social media accounts. In general, this is the way I see other use social media too. But larger business maximize social media by advertising directly to their target audience.

Ann Smarty points out that 10 years ago there was no Facebook or Twitter, and 15 years ago, email wasn’t even that popular. It is hard for people in our generation to imagine this because we were brought up along side social media. Even watching our parents struggle to use social media frustrates us because it comes to us so naturally. I can only imagine this will get exponentially worse as our generation starts to have children. Jay Scott touches on this in an article for the Huffington Post. He talks about all the great changes social media has already made for our society and hopes this will continue to grow.

Over all, most people are in agreement that social media has both its advantages and disadvantages. I think that if you use it in appropriate ways, it can be a great tool in almost all aspects of your life, both professionally and personally.

 

Sources:

Ta, S. Q. (13 August 2014) What impact social media truly had on society. [Web Article.] Retrieved from http://www.business2community.com/social-media/impact-social-media-truly-society-0974685#l3IQysp51CLqjfaR.97

Smarty, A. (N.d) Social media and society: The good, the bad, and the ugly. [Web Article.] Retrieved from http://www.seochat.com/c/a/social/social-media-and-society-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

Scott, J. (30 May 2014) Social media makes an impact on society. [Web Article.] Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-scott/social-media-makes-an-imp_b_5406126.html

Future of This Blog

Karwoski, O. (6 April 2016) Inside WordPress. [Screenshot]

With only a few weeks left in the semester, we were asked what our plans were for our blog’s future. When I was first told about using a blog for this class, I wasn’t too excited about it. But over the course of the semester, I have grown to like it more and more. I plan keep my blog rather than deleting it. But I don’t think I will continue to post to it.
The benefits of keeping the blog is that when future employers do a Google search for my name, something other than my many social media accounts will come up. It also shows off some of my skills that I have learned in this class that can verify information on my resume and maybe even impress them. That being said, while I’m proud of most of my project, I do believe that some of them don’t reflect my true ability, such as my Photoshop project.

The same thing goes for networking. I’ve already had people outside of this class “like” or comment on my blog. Just today I had two hits from India, which I thought was pretty cool. While these people currently looking at my blog
are probably not professionals, its possible that they could find my blog too.

Overall, I think blogging has been a good experience for me. Some of the jobs I looked at for the Tech in Career assignment even listed WordPress as a desired skill.

 

Dream Job

Karwoski, O. (2016, March 27) Indeed. [Screenshot]

As an assignment for my CAP 105 class, we looked up jobs that we may be interested to see what kind of experience or qualifications companies require in regards to technology. I used Indeed to search for jobs. If you like on the title for each position, it will take you to the link to the specific posting. Below are my findings.

Content Specialist for Crain Communication Inc.

• 5+ experience in digital content creation
• Current with Search Engine Optimization, social media, social adverting and Internet marketing industry trends and best practices
• Broad understanding of tradition and new media
• High curiosity quotient in latest marketing and design site, trends and tools.

Manager of Digital Communications for DTE Energy

• 7+ years of experience in employee communications
• Previous experience in digital communication and social media marketing
• Strong knowledge of digital and social media marketing strategies, tactic and platforms, as well as web content strategic planning
• Experience with web tools such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Content Management Systems, WordPress (yay!), SEO, and social media tools.

Marketing & Advertising Manager for ERIE Construction 

• History of sales, marketing or advertising – with track record of success
• 1 year experience in marketing, sales or lead generation

Social Media Intern for Modern Content Inc. 

• Knowledge of Excel
• Major social channels required
• Photoshop and/or WordPress (or any HTML talents would be a plus

Social Media Manager for Vivid Visual Solutions

• Scheduling posts using Hootsuite
• Creating marketing reports
• Creating and maintaining social media accounts
• Filter and reply to blog comments

I was a little shocked at many of the jobs, including other ones I didn’t post about, required more than three years of experience. I understand the importance of internships during college, but it is unlikely I will leave college with over a year of experience in the fields companies are asking for. This makes me think I may have to settle for a job that may not be my first choice in order to gain more experience. But on the other hand, I also realized how many of the aspects touch on in this class  popped up in the qualification list such as Hootsuite, WordPress, SEO, Photoshop, etc. Overall, this assignment was eye opening to my job expectations before and after graduation.

Brand Yourself

 

Karwoski, O. (2016, May 23) Brand Yourself. [Screenshot].

As an assignment for CAP 105, we used the site Brand Yourself to optimize the google search results for our name. Before using the site, I was expecting it to score you on the professional nature of your posts. When completing the assignment, I learned that it scores you based on if the result is positive, negative, or a different person. I have a pretty unique name, so only a few of the results weren’t mine and all of them were positive resulting in my score of A-.

In order to improve my score I went through and marked each results as positive, negative, or not mine. I also went though and added other links such as my personal website and my about me page. I then did the list of recommendations for each website. I also boosted my personal website so that it would be one of the first results people saw when they searched me. Overall, I found this website easy to use and I can see how it would be very helpful.

About Me

Karwoski, O. (2016, May 23) About Me. [Screenshot]

As an assignment for my CAP 105 class, we used a website of our choosing to tie together all  our social media presences. I chose to use About Me. Above is a screenshot of what my page looks like. I chose to link my Facebook and Instagram because those are the social media sites I use the most. About Me has so many different options of social media sites you can link together such as your WordPress blog, Pinterest, Flickr, etc.

While looking through the site options, I noticed a lot of photography sites. I could see how using a site to tie together all my social medias together would be a great asset in my professional life. It even gave me an option to link people to my portfolio which I thought was pretty cool.

Here is a link to my page.

Hootsuite

As an assignment for my CAP 105 class I learned how to use Hootsuite. Hootsuite is a website where you can schedule social media posts in advance and it can also analyze results for you. Before this assignment I had never heard of such a program and I found it fun, easy and very useful to work with. Our assignment was to twitter, but seeing as I am a photography major, I got the go ahead to use Instagram instead because I saw it as more fitting.

Karwoski, O. (2016, May 23) Screenshot. [Screenshot].

If you want to see the full posts, you can go to my Instagram here.

I read an article about the best times to post on Instagram. It said that generally, Wednesday posts received slightly more likes than other day’s posts and around 5 pm usually got the most likes. I used a few of those times to see if it would make a difference. Over all, I really enjoyed using Hoostuite for this assignment and plan to try and learn more about everything the website is capable of doing.

Update: I learned that even if you have scheduled your posts, you have to be available at the time  to confirm it. I had my post scheduled for 10 am and did not realize this, so my actual post did not go live until noon when I did some research and figured it out. It also made me copy and paste my caption into Instagram . This is a strange feature because it then becomes basically just a timer reminding you to post, and if you’re not around at that time, it does not get published. I was very impressed with this site at first, but this feature makes me not as excited to use it.

 

Business Card

As an assignment for my CAP 105 class, we were tasked to make a business card using InDesign. I have worked with other Adobe software before such as Illustrator and Photoshop, but not InDesign. I found that it was fairly similar to the other programs I have worked with.

I found it hard to come up with ideas for a business card. I wasn’t even sure what kind of information is usually put on professional business cards. I googled some examples to get a better idea.  Below is the business card I created.

Karwoski, O. (17 March 2016) Business Card. [InDesign Document]

This business card is not as professional as I would like, I was more focused on learning the software. Later in life when I need a professional one, I would redo it with official information.