My Personal Brand - My online CV

I am a first year Geology undergraduate at the University of Leicester, with a particular interest in applied Geology such as mining and oil/gas exploration. My goal of this networking Leicester Award is to understand the importance of making a personal brand online, effectively showing my talent and potential as a future employee as I progress on to my second year at the university. I hope to eventually distinguish myself from other Geology undergraduates in the same field and I hope to show this from the beginning of my reflective blog.

My audience: you; will be potential employers as well as peers who enjoy a similar amount of enthusiasm for Geology. I believe it is important to not only be enthusiastic, but passionate about your subject area. The aim of the next three reflective blogs will hopefully give you an insight into being a Geology undergraduate in a very challenging and competitive market, which may create awareness of the issues undergraduates face.

I hope to portray myself to be an enthusiastic, determined and head-strong individual, who does understand the need for an online presence within my future graduate community. I hope to share with you my experience so far, at the age of nineteen, both within Geology and outside interests, portraying my personal skills, and applying them to real life situations and how I have dealt with these.

This blog is normally informal, but I do believe is on topic with my geological interests. I like to blog about my fieldwork experiences and will continue in the future as I feel it is important to show yourself just as enthusiastic in the field as you are learning in a lecture theatre. But, I also feel it is good to portray yourself as an individual outside of learning, showing your skills through outdoors activities for example demonstrating teamwork.

Before I began on the ONE award course, I did not realise just how important it is to have an online presence. I had both Twitter and Facebook purely for social reasons – it did not occur to me that I could actually use these as a employability tool. From the course so far, I did not realise 45% of companies use Twitter to find talent and 50% of companies use Facebook to find talent. This completely shocked me and made me realise I need to get a head start and make myself noticed from day one.

By having a personal brand and portraying it effectively, I hope to not only promote myself, but be in the know with regards to Geology, whether that’s company updates, or new internships and placements they are offering – I need to stay in the know to be able to compete with other undergraduates. This will broaden my opportunities and be able to network with professionals whom may inspire my career further. It will be interesting to see how others portray themselves using online social media, and can analyse these pages to see what is effective and what isn’t which will help me when I come to complete my own personal brand.


Written on: 7th July 2013

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