Hello again. In this last presentation, we will review this week's lectures in the light of career branding. As we mentioned earlier, career branding is often seen as being synonymous with creating a powerful personal image. In this specialization, we use a different approach. We think that without building a solid foundation of critically important competencies and skills, any personal branding, image polishing, or other cosmetic types of activities are doomed to fail. For getting dream jobs, one clearly needs to first build an impressive portfolio of dream skills. The word impressive, is particularly important because brand and branding are not about how one might think about their preparedness for a particular job. By definition, this is about how their capability to perform on the job is perceived by others. Most notably, prospective employers and colleagues. Career branding is all about how you can stand out and impress the world with your skills portfolio to win the competitive selection process. But the problem is that employers can only see as much of your skills as you showcase to them. So, it is your job to make your unique skills and powerful personal image visible. In other words, if you cannot pinpoint, document and demonstrate your mastery of solving problems that are relevant to the employers situation, prospective employers may not notice you. If you are really great, it is their problem they didn't select you and missed the boat. Or is it your problem? And you were the one that missed the boat. We began this week by discussing how benchmarking your skills against standards and best practices in the field. And measuring your level of proficiency in performing required duties, can help you realistically and objectively evaluate your standing in the competition from a prospective employer's point of view. Then, we discussed advantages of developing an instrument for conducting an objective evaluation of your strengths and revealing competency gaps in comparison with the competition. Finally, we discussed how have the instrument can be beneficial for organizing and monitoring your professional development activities in the career development lab. In a minute, we will continue this conversation in this CDL workout section of the course. Now it is time to think about how skill building is connected with brand development. While you were conducting a thorough and objective benchmarking of your skills against the competition, you'll also be collecting and documenting evidence of your master in the field. In other words, you'll be getting ready to prove that you have achieved the required level of competency, based on real or realistic data. Evidence and data are the keys to brand development. To help you connect skill building and brand development, we would like to introduce the DREAM Framework. We use it in the "Self-Management and Self-Marketing" course at SUNY Empire State College. To illustrate how students can make a transition from an internal perspective of skill building to an external perspective of brand development. First, when a skill is being developed by an individual it is not visible to anyone else. Once it is developed, the skill should be demonstrated and documented. This way, it becomes a demonstrable skill but its quality has not yet been establish. Peer review, in addition to self assessment will help you estimate your level of mastery performing the skill. But to find out what your real level is, it should be assess by an expert evaluator. Once this is done and documented, the next logical step will be to showcase the skill to outside audiences and get the recognition and appreciation. After that, your mastery of the skill will become a part of your career brand. Once you can pinpoint, document and showcase your skills in performing an important job requirement, you won't be seen in the selection process as one of many with unrecognizable credentials. By following the DREAM framework, you should be able to present yourself as someone who stands out as the master of the skill. Will continue this conversation in Course 3. Overall, by learning how to pinpoint, document, evaluate and communicate your new skills and using an evidence based data driven approach you'll reach a major milestone in the specialization, you'll build the foundation of your brand. In Course 3, you'll learn how you can present and showcase your skills. Enjoy the course. We'll see you in the lab.
